Six on Saturday 13-04-2019

Early spring has been reminding us that it is closely related to late winter. We haven’t had any inclement weather, it has been glorious sunshine all week, but it is not warm and has dipped below freezing overnight a couple of times. I don’t yet have anything tender exposed (as it very much were) so I was not overly concerned until realising that the plum blossom might have liked some fleece protection. Too late. Ah well, time for Six on Saturday – Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything, a flower, a plan, a bug, seedlings, vegetables, a job completed, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six for this week.

1 – Wisteria flower buds. These will be open in a couple of weeks I think. I have waxed lyrical about this wisteria here before, but for newer readers, this plant spent its first 5 years in my possession stubbornly not flowering. I gather this is not unusual for wisteria, they can take a while to get going. It is probably ten years old now. It has grown up and increasingly through the trellis and now across the arch and along the other trellis. It is super vigorous. Due to my pruning and training inadequacies when it was a younger plant, all the flowers are at the top of the stack. I have been training whippy growth horizontally at lower levels which does result in better foliage coverage but has not yet resulted in the top to bottom profusion of flowers that I see in more optimally grown specimens. I am wondering if I should bite the bullet and behead the plant to encourage flowering growth lower down. This would mean removing pretty much all the flowering stems and also the extension growth over the arch. That feels drastic so am dithering. Any advice?

2 – Narcissus ‘Pipit’. One of several newly planted varieties for me this year, this one flowers in mid to late spring. They start off a lemon yellow then supposedly the trumpets fade to a creamy white. There are two or three flower heads per stem so good flower power per bulb. I quite like it but ‘Jetfire’ is still top daff.

3 – Geranium maculatum ‘Beth Chatto’. Apparently this variety was first bred in the US and named there, so nothing directly to do with Beth or the gardens that now bear her name. It has lilac pink flowers which have an almost bluish tinge to them. I think I bought this plant at a plant fair last year. I seem to have a few so I must have divided it at the time. Shock, I know. I have many new geraniums this year after going a bit crazy in the bargain section last autumn. This is the first one of the lot to flower, and it seems to be going for it with some gusto. Beth forms a good sized clump, apparently. Good for her. She is in a planter, keeping roses and clematis company.

4 – Clematis montana ‘Warwickshire Rose’. I bought several climbers last year for the ridiculous price of £1.76 each. They were only small, but still, there can’t be much money in that for the grower, although that clearly didn’t stop me buying them. Two of these plants were montanas, both of which quickly grew on. The other is ‘Marjorie’. They both seem happy in the partial shade down the side of the house. They are both 3m or so high and forming flower buds. Won’t be long now before they open.

5 – Clematis recta purpurea, seedling. Sown in January 2017, this germinated last spring. It’s a herbaceous plant, not a shrub or climber, so it died back completely over the winter, emerging again just recently. Hopefully it will get big enough that I can plant it out later in the spring, otherwise I will leave it to grow in the pot till next year. It’s often a long game, this gardening lark.

6 – Tulip ‘Cash’. Right then, let the tulip glory commence. These are in a pot on my patio, but I also have some out in the border. There is a lot more cash out in the garden than there is in my pocket, both figuratively and literally!

Those are my Six, what are yours? If you’d like to join in, just publish your post then pop a link to it in the comments below. If you also mention my blog in yours, that would be super. For more details and other ways to take part, you read the brief guide here.

Have a fabulous weekend in the garden, I have some fencing to erect, should keep me off the streets for a while. Don’t forget to check in again during the day as more links get added.

I’ll be back next weekend for another #SixOnSaturday.