It’s been pretty windy out during the week, but I haven’t lost anything and all the tall plants are still upright, if leaning a little drunkenly in some cases.  Time for another Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday.  Could be anything – a job to do, a completed project, a weed, a pest, a good flower, a favourite plant – anything at all, so long as it’s in your garden now!  Why not join in?  All the best people do!

Here are my Six for this week.

1. Heuchera ‘Palace Purple’.  One of my recent bargain plant purchases, I bought three of these for a fraction of the sticker price at my local garden centre. Bit annoyed to realise later that just one of them would have nicely divided into three good size plants, but never mind. I recently planted these out , they are occupying a corner plot and are flowering a little bit.  I mainly like them for the purple-bronze foliage, which is semi-evergreen, the flowers are a bonus.

2. Dahlia ‘Black Jack’. This has been a late bloomer. It is one of three new tubers I bought this year, this is its first flower.  I planted it out in the front garden nearly three months ago, it has really leapt forward growth-wise in the last two or three weeks.  I must remember to feed it this weekend.  I almost didn’t see it against the relatively dark background as I went to work the other day.  Up close I think it looks pretty special. It’s not really black, of course, but very dark purple.

 

3. Bulbs. I’m not hugely looking forward to planting the bulbs, but I have a pile to do. Some are from previous years, removed from pots or otherwise dug up, stored for the dormant season, probably 100 or so in total, plus another 150-odd newly ordered this year.  There are daffs, tulips and I also have 75 allium bulbs to plant, 5 different varieties.  I have a few alliums in the ground already but wanted more of a display. The alliums I think I will plant out in October, the tulips can wait until November.  I need to think about a planting plan for them. For the tulips, I have half an idea to plant up then bury pots in the borders so that they can be removed easily when the flowers are done. Sure I’ve read that somewhere. That might be worth a separate post at some point.  Whilst it’s a bit of a faff to plant them out, the results are well worth it, and no doubt they will feature in spring editions of Six on Saturday!

4. Aster ‘Little Carlow’. The powers that be have re-classified this fella so it is now supposed to be called Symphotrichum ‘Little Carlow’. I think we’ll be calling them asters for a generation or two yet.  I got these at a plant fair back in May.  I have two clumps, one in Border 4 and one in Border 5.  They are beginning to get into their stride, flower-wise.  It should flower through October, and tolerates a bit of shade.  I need to do a better job of supporting it next year, it’s flopping about a bit. I must find out if I can propagate by means other than division…

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5. Tiarella ‘Pink Skyrocket’. I’ve not grown tiarella, or foam flower, before, so I don’t know how well this will do in my garden.  The flower spikes are done for this year, but as the cultivar name suggests they are long stems of pink flowers.  The foliage is attractive in its own right, and as a bonus is more or less evergreen.  It’s allegedly happiest in a bit of shade, I hope it’s not too sunny where I have it.

6. Greenhouse tap. This still feels like a luxury item to me. I fitted it earlier in the year, it makes me smile every time I fill up a watering can without having to trudge all the way up to the outside tap by the house.  The trigger to install was seeing a Sarah Raven video clip about dahlia cuttings, in which she oh-so-casually reached about a foot to the right and filled a ‘can.  I lost interest in the cuttings advice (temporarily, naturally) and immediately set to work figuring out how to make the tap happen. I would not want to be without it now.

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That’s my Six for this week, what about yours?  If you’d like to join the many other fabulous contributors, please just add a comment to this post with a link to your post, and maybe a link back to this blog in yours.  I love nosing around other people’s gardens and look forward immensely to reading the other Six posts each week.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, don’t forget to check back to see the other Sixes as they get added.

I’ll be back next week with another set of Six.