Six on Saturday – And still they come

12/03/2022

It’s been a bit of a mixed week weather-wise, but Spring is surely advancing. Daffodil displays are in now full swing. In fact, there’s a local daffodil festival in Thriplow next weekend that I will try to get to. I imagine that the festival will be packed, given that they’ve not been able to run it for the last two years. We will see.

Anyhow, it’s time to join Mr Propagator’s popular meme, Six-on-Saturday: Six gardening-related things, shared on a Saturday.

1 Crocuses

This week crocuses have been the best-in-show in our garden. Even the patches of ‘Cream Beauty’ that had been wrecked by pigeons have sent up more flowers and are now looking very pretty in the sunshine. That succession of flowers is one of the brilliant things about crocuses … and still they are coming.

A selection of crocuses from the garden, including from left to right and top to bottom: C. tommasinianus, C. Joan of Arc, C. Yalta, C. Cream Beauty, C. Pickwick, possibly C tricolour, C. Ruby Giant, C. joan of Arc again (they seriously have the biggest glowing goblets ever!) and finally C. Ruby Giant – with giant buff tailed bumblebee.

I am still ‘wasting’ a lot of time staring at their open faces, transfixed by the bees hurtling from one cup to the next.

2) Harvington ‘Pink Speckled’ Hellebore

The lost Hellebore Harvington ‘Pink Speckled’

A few weeks back I thought that I had lost this beauty. Well, it turns out that it really had disappeared from the front garden, but it is now growing in the fern bit of the back garden. (In my defense, unless you lift their nodding heads you don’t get to see those speckles and this plant looked identical to several others I’d moved to this section last year.) Once I found it, of course I remembered that when the gas supply was installed last summer I relocated a number of plants along the proposed route of the pipe, for safe keeping. 🤦

3) Early flowering Geum

I’ve been amazed that my ‘Totally Tangerine’ Geum has withstood winter completely intact and is already offering up its lovely, crinkled orange flowers again. It’s obviously a doer!

Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’

4) Violets

I’ve not really got the hang of violet growing … That is, I don’t seem to have any control over where they appear from one year to the next. They creep around the borders as they please, which I don’t mind at all, but they never make much of a show. That seems a shame, especially as I really want to find enough to make Sugared Violets and that is seems unlikely to be the case again this year. If anyone knows the trick to making them settle and bulk up, I’d be grateful to hear it!

Sweet violets – a deliciously scented, edible wild flower

5) First tulips

I may have given up on buying new tulips for our garden, because of the >95% attrition rate before they get to flowering (squirrels, mice, voles), but we have a few that are well-established (presumably they are deep, deep down in the soil) and these come back for us every year. The earliest repeaters are the species tulips like Tulipa turkestanica and Tulipa clusiana var. chrysantha. I may not be the biggest fan of yellow flowers, but these put a smile on my face every time I see them splayed wide open, advertising their wares.

Tulipa clusiana var chrysantha

6) Euphorbia wulfenii

This was the view that greeted me when I entered the walled garden at work on Thursday. Great isn’t it?

Euphorbia wulfenii

I have this euphorbia in my own garden too, but it doesn’t catch the light in the same way, let alone have the lovely wall and espalier backdrop.

Well, that is me done! There are heaps more Sixes to see if you click through to Jonathon’s blog.

Enjoy!

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