Six on Saturday 06-07-2019

Here we go again. This weekend has come around fast, a trip to Vienna for work breaking the week up nicely. It’s set to be one of those funny weekends weatherwise. It’s going to be warm, but cloudy. But not cloudy in a useful way, with rain, just cloudy. Six on Saturday then. Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a flower, a water feature, wildlife, weeds, a plan, a job done, a harvest, anything at all. Join in!

Here are my Six.

1 – Penstemon ‘Patio Wine’. I bought this plant a few years ago and it has survived the winter each time. This year it seems to be thriving. All the flowers you can see are on the same plant. I took cuttings last year and have a few offspring dotted around the place.

2 – Veronica, or speedwell. I grew a few of these from seed a couple of years ago. They were the straggly, badly looked after plants I never got around to potting on. They sulked on planting out, never really doing anything. Until now! The plants seem to have bulked out quite a bit, and where there was previously one or two half hearted flower stems, now there are many. Literally, a late bloomer.

3 – Clematis ‘Blue Angel’. One of many planted along the sunny fenceline a couple of years ago. Last year this didn’t produce more than about 5 flowers. This year there are many more. I was not intending them to intermingle with the neighbouring ‘Mme Julia Correvon’ but she is a sprawler. They look quite nice together, I think. Hoping for even more from Blue Angel next year.

4 – Hypericum ‘Magical Universe’. Bought on a visit to Waterperry last October, in something of a blind plant-buying frenzy. You know how it goes sometimes, the red mist descends, rhyme and reason go out the window. It is a small shrub, allegedly well behaved. Doubling down on my impulse purchase, I took cuttings, and now have two more of them knocking about. It will flower then leave glossy red berries behind.

5 – Ceanothus. For ages I tried to propagate from a big ceanothus shrub/tree in my garden, failed every time. I wanted one to train against the wall in the side alley. Frustrated by my inability to do this I just bought one. It is still small, and a bit bullied by the vigorous rose with which it shares container space. It has grown on quite nicely and has several good stems growing in useful directions. When I prune the roses etc back I’ll be able to train this into the wires properly. It is flowering now, as you can see. A hoverfly was flitting about as I took the picture. I tried to include it in the photo with the flowers but it wouldn’t stay still long enough.

6 – Penstemon ‘Husker Red’. Grown from seed a couple of years ago, these have done well. For some reason they are all in the front garden, so something about those conditions agrees with them. The stems and the leaves are red (reddish at any rate), hence the name, but the flowers are almost pure white. I’m not sure I like them that much, if I am stuck for space for nicer plants I may well dig these up and move them on to another home.

Those are my Six, what are yours? If you’d like to join in (all the best people do), just publish your Six post then pop a link to in the comments below. If you also mention my blog in yours that would be super. If you’d like more details then you can read the brief guide.

Have a fabulous gardening weekend, don’t forget to check back in during the day as more links get added.

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