Six on Saturday 06-04-2019

We had a windy March and now we seem to be having a showery April. How traditional! After a few months on the dryish side it is good to see some decent rain, so long as it largely stops for the weekend – I have things to do! Without further ado, time for Six on Saturday. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a flower, a new plant, a job to do, a success, a failure, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week.

1 – Rosebud, Dr Eckener. Of the 15 or so roses I now have, I think this is the first rosebud to develop this year. It is certainly the first I have noticed. This is encouraging as Dr Eckener was a slow starter after planting last year, not flowering at all. The bud is small yet and it will be a couple of months before I see the flowers on this one. This rose lives in one of the planters in the side alley. Technically this is a shrub rose but it grows to 8’x8′ eventually so I am training it against the wall as a climber. I am looking forward to herr doktor adding some colour and some fragrance to what I hope will be quite a heady mix.

2 – Poppy seedlings. Not self-sown exactly, I helped by scattering seeds about as I was deadheading last year. If I’m right, these are ‘lauren’s grape’, a purple annual. There must be 50 of them dotted about the border so I need to thin them out a little. I think I will pot some up, one never knows when one might need plants in an emergency. Supposedly they get to 3′ but I don’t think any made it much past 2′ last year. Perhaps they’ll be a bit more vigorous this year.

3 – Tulips! I have a few returners from last years hybrids, but for the most part they are duds. I think they need a lot more mollycoddling than I have time for to increase the chances of repeats. Happily, thanks to this year’s batch, it should not be much longer before I am once again a fully paid up resident of tulipsville. The buds are up and the colouring is already evident. This one is ‘Pretty Princess’. I do love a tulip.

4 – Amelanchier grandiflora ‘Robin Hill’ – flowers. I bought this tree last year having realised that I don’t actually have any trees to speak of in the garden. Those I do have are really borrowed from neighbouring plots. This should eventually get to 3 or 4 metres tall tops, so shouldn’t swamp out the garden too much. The flowers are nice by themselves, but in a week or two will be set off beautifully by the coppery foliage as it emerges fully. Happy with this tree so far.

5 – Tiarella ‘Pink Skyrocket’. I last looked closely at this plant a few weeks back and it looked decidedly scrappy. It didn’t do much last year, I suspect it sulked after I moved it to a shadier spot, and the remaining foliage looked very untidy. Now, though, the new foliage is coming through, superseding the old, and with that comes the flower spikes. It looks like there will be a couple of dozen so it should be quite the bobbydazzler when in its pomp.

6 – Dicentra spectabilis, lampradoo-dah if you insist, or bleeding heart for the common amongst us. Several years old now, this plant disappears entirely for the winter, emerging each year anew. The flowers are lovely but I actually prefer the foliage on this variety, a lime-tinged shade of green that positively glows in the shady border. I think I have a cutting of it somewhere, not sure if that survived the winter. If not I’ll have another go this year, it is a plant I like a lot.

Those are mine, what are yours? If you’d like to join in, please do, just publish your post and pop a link to it in the comments below. The link is important so that others that may not know about your blog see it. If you also mention/link to my blog in yours that would be fab. You can find more details and other ways to take part in the brief participant guide.

Have a productive weekend in the garden and don’t forget to check back in during the day as more links get added.

I’ll be back next week with another #SixOnSaturday.