Six on Saturday (25 June 2022)

Why does a week off work always fly by compared to a regular working week? An overnight stay at Lyme Regis and a day trip to Minehead hasn’t left much time for gardening. However, I did make a start planting the annuals one evening. Any half-hearted plans for a sort of colour-themed planting scheme have gone straight out the window after realising I’d forgotten to label everything at the potting on stage. Still, the usual multicoloured mish-mash approach tends to work fine most of the time, even when it comes to orange…

1. Although, I’m not totally convinced my first Six on Saturday is all that orange. Rosa ‘Simply the Best’ (a bold claim and apologies if anyone ends up with that song in their head all day) looks more yellow in reality, especially compared to the orange California poppy that has self seeded nearby. This is its second summer and it has yet to thrive, in fact the lower leaves are succumbing to black spot. I can’t help thinking I should have gone for a more obviously orange variety. It’s nice enough, don’t get me wrong, and fragrant… just not quite as fragrant as on the online descriptions led me to believe.

2. From subtle yellowy-orange/orangey-yellow to Penstemon ‘Garnet.’ There were a few Penstemon casualties over the winter and I foolishly didn’t bother to take any cuttings last year. This one is doing well though (and hopefully distracting one’s gaze from the washing in the background). I’ll be doing a spot of ‘Garnet’ cloning soon.

3. Now let’s cool things down a bit with Anemone leveillei. At least that’s what it’s supposed to be, but the flowers are lacking the blue pollen and are more pointy of petal than those shown on the websites of plant purveyors.

4. Another Rose up next. I don’t think I included ‘New Dawn’ last year, rather taking it for granted. A healthy climber that doesn’t seem to suffer from black spot, ‘New Dawn’ is doing particularly well this summer.

5. As is this Lily. For the third year running there’s been neither hide nor hair of a lily beetle. Weird.

6. And finally… California poppies. First sown almost 10 years ago, these have seeded themselves around the garden ever since. Most end up orange but there are a few yellow varieties here and there. They can get a bit sprawly, swamping nearby plants, but they usually recover after a chop. The flowers last several days indoors in a vase, closing up in the evenings and unfurling each morning.

They were my Six on Saturday. For more Sixes on Saturday, from all around the world, take a look at the site of the chap who started it all over at https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com.