Six on Saturday 24-06

Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a good flower, a favourite shrub, a project, a failure, funny shaped veg, anything! Why not join in?  Here are my six for this week.

1 –  Fuschia – these ladies (and they are ladies) seem to be out of fashion for some reason.  I always have a few knocking about the place. They are reliably hardy, flower for ages, and as #4 child often says, look like ballerinas.  They are also relatively easy to propagate from cuttings.  What’s not to like?  I’ve had a soft spot for them since a primary  school visit to Avery Hill College hothouse in (blimey!) 1981, maybe, where they had many examples.

2 – Painted Lady Fern (athyrium niponicum var pictum).  I have just a few ferns, but I do like them.  Border 5 in the garden is a longish border and it is mostly shaded for most of the day.  At a push I might argue that the very edge is partial shade, but really it’s full shade in the main.  Ferns, being mostly woodland creatures, are happy enough in these conditions and all my ferns are in this border.  These silver-leaved ferns were bought from a specialist shady plant nursery a couple of years ago.  They have been small ever since, but this year are beginning to establish. They are a little tucked away under a shrub, so are just coquetishly showing a bit of leg, a closer look is necessary to see more, as it were.  Rude!  I like both the colour and the form of the fronds.

3 — Allium.  I featured the flowers from these bulbs several weeks ago .  The flowers are long gone, but they continue to provide good service as seed heads.  I find them structurally quite fascinating.  I leave them in till they inevitably collapse under their own weight later in the summer.

4 – Lychnis chalcedonica (pink form) – I grew these from seed some years back, they are a reliable repeat performer in Border 3, and have not been too badly behaved from a self-seeding point of view.  I am not a huge fan, to be perfectly honest. The photo is quite flattering as it’s a close up, but the flowers are rather small and a bit anonymous at garden scale.  I can easily imagine ditching them in favour of something more interesting in future years, but for now they stay, why not?

5 – Geranium ex nodosum- I bought this at a plant fair a few weeks ago for peanuts, it was probably a division from a fellow Hardy Planter’s garden, grown from seed, so the parent may have been a different colour. I’ve put it in Border 4 in a fairly shady spot. It is still flowering away quite happily, but I’m tempted to chop it back to encourage another flush of growth. The flowers are small, but bright and nicely marked.  I’ll probably increase by division later in the year, see how it gets on.

6 – Rose (variety still unknown) – this is an encore from the mystery rose I featured last week.  At that time there was only one flower but plenty of buds.  It is now going bonkers with the flaars, couldn’t resist including it again.

 

So that’s my Six for this Saturday. I am really enjoying reading Sixes from other bloggers’ gardens. If you’d like to join in (very welcome to) please just include a link to your post in the comments here, and maybe a link back to this blog in your post.

Enjoy your weekend, and I’ll be back with another Six next Saturday.