Six on Saturday 04-05-2019

May the Fourth be with you! Away put your trowel, I mean you no harm. Hmmmm, gardening it is, yes? The fork is strong in this one. Enough Star Wars for now. Or is it? A long time ago, in a garden not far away, the first ever Six on Saturday post was published. Almost exactly two years ago in fact. While I hoped some other bloggers might join in at some point, little did I know that it would quickly gather momentum and become a weekly glimpse into the gardens of the world! I’m very happy to have started the ball rolling. It is thus very much time for an anniversary Six on Saturday – Six things, on a Saturday, in the garden. Could be anything! A flower, a good plant, a seedling, a completed project, a epic failure, anything at all. Join in!

For this week’s Six I am revisiting some of the same plants that were featured in the very first Six.

1 – Wisteria floribunda (I think). Wisteria time again. Since the first Six post two years ago, this plant has established a very solid beachhead on the left trellis and is busy conquering the arch and right trellis, as well as the main fence line. To be fair to it, I have been encouraging this rampant behaviour. I have been training various long whippy growth lower down too in the hope (forlorn, I fear) hope that it will flower lower down too. It is stubbornly refusing to do anything other than flower up top. Never mind, I am busy growing clematis and roses to fill in lower down.

2 – Rose, ‘Dr Eckener’. Two years ago I featured a tightly furled bud of rosa ‘danse de feu’ and I could do the same again this time. I can do one better though – I have an actual rose, albeit from a different climber. It is the first rose to open in my garden this year. Herr Doktor had no flowers in his first year but this year there are many of the multicolour buds that precede the bee-magnets. It smells pretty good too.

3 – Fatsia japonica. This has grown quite a bit since I included this two years ago. The new growth for this season is well on its way, still strongly resembling the hands of the undead. This shrub is a reliable performer in a shady corner and evergreen to boot.

4 – Lilac ‘Josee’. Also smelling fabulous at the moment, this dwarf tree has grown quite large in the two years since I included it in the first post. It’s a good 5 feet tall now. I did wonder if it was getting too big, but I trimmed away the lower branches to raise the canopy, this has created a bit of space for underplanting. It is a little anonymous for most of the year, so I am still wondering a little bit if it shouldn’t come out. For now it stays.

That’s the last of the nostalgia trip as the other two plants featured two years ago are either no longer with us (the sambucus nigra) or not doing anything interesting at the moment (the cornus).

5 – Geum ‘Flames of Passion’. A rather pretentious name for this little plant. I bought it half price (of course) at the end of last year, it is settling in nicely. It is certainly flowering well, although it seems to be one of those annoyingly droopy plants whose flowers are permanently gazing at their shoes.

6 – Clematis montana ‘Warwickshire Rose’. Recently featured as buds, I think, the flowers are now out. This is the first flowering for a plant I bought last year when very small for £1.76. I expect even better things next year as the plant establishes itself even more.

Those are my Six for this week? What are yours? If you’d like to join in, just publish your post and pop a link to it in the comments below. If you also mention my blog in yours that would be, like, totally awesome. For more details and other ways to participate, you can read the brief guide.

Have a lovely weekend in the garden. For those in the UK, I note that the weather has staged a comeback, the outlook for this holiday weekend looks decidedly dull, wet and cool. That’s more like it! Don’t forget to check back in during the day as more links get added.

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