Six on Saturday - 6 June 2026

The start of June has been cool, wet and windy, but with a few hours of sun as well.  The water but is now full and at least with this rain the soil is more moist making it easier to garden, move plants, and seedlings etc.  Our band of gardeners heads over to Jim's with our six each Saturday and there should you fancy joining in you will also find how to do it, as well as links to other SOSers posts.

Let us get cracking:

1.  Starting off with a view of my garden shelf as it is this week:

The succulents have made their way out of the conservatory, and some of the smaller ones are in their summer location on the shelf.  I tend to change what goes on this shelf purely on a whim. They usually are the smaller plants with intricate details, that I like to observe close up. The larger pots are on the ground, and more about them another week.

2. In the taller studio pot is our 'plug plant for the year' from my gardening club.  This year we were all given the same one to grow which we are then to take for judging at our Summer Party.  

It has taken a few weeks to grow from a plug plant to this colourful specimen of  Bidens 'Bee Happy Orange', and at the level on the shelf one of the surprising things to discover is its lovely scent. 

Talking about judging, I am off to day to judge a section at the Garden Fete at the Bishop's Palace in Wells today. 

3.. This  small hover fly was attracted to the bidens. This week I was relieved to find hover flies visiting flowers.  I think they are late this year, was it my lack of observation or was a hiatus in their life cycle?

4. I was checking out the front garden and noticed that the clump of Rhodiola pachyclados sometimes known as Sedum pachyclados, was ready for 'rejuvenating' as it had grown wide with the middle dying out.  I removed some of the side growths and have placed them in one of the old bonsai pots, making a 'Kasamono' style planting. I like the smaller dainty rssetts of blue green to silver leaves.  At this level it is so easy to love at their wonderful detail.  I have never had these flower for me but I am quite happy with that.

5.  With a week of very heavy showers and also strong winds, the roses shrubs have had a battering. Rose Grace and Rose Munstead Wood definitely came off worse, and I have had to trim off some of the heavier flowers whilst dead heading, and will need to find some supports.

Over on the other side of the seating circle the four Timeless bushes with their strong stems are still upright.

This is a close up of Timeless Pink the closest in the above picture.

Rose Timeless Pink

6. This is a view along the Shady Border path leading towards the Gooseberry bush.

Towards the back, a little in front of the gooseberry bush, the patch of Valerian with its tall flowering stems is wafting its lovely sweet vanilla scent. It currently has loads of blackfly up its stem, with a patrol of ants travelling up and down, but there are also loads of ladybird larvae and pupae around the garden and they will soon be under control.  For some reason loads of white Love in the mist has come up but no blue ones this year, and the pale pink froth half way down the path on the right hand side are the flowers of the lovely ground cover plant Saxifraga stolonifera.  Once it flowers, the plant dies off, but there are plenty of little plants forming at the end of their stolons, a little like strawberries. Is there a name for a plant that is hardy, lives through the winter and dies after it flowers, but has in the meantime propagated itself through stolens? Also does this saxifrage set viable seed?

AI tells me that they are called stoloniferous monocarpic and produce vegetative clones called pups or runners.  I'll be exploring my lovely old books later to read more about this and understand a little more about this form of plant.  

So it is best bit and tucker to