Six on Saturday 25/05/19

It’s been a great week weather wise except that we’ve still had no rain. Not a drop. Not even at night. The plants are all hardened off now and ready to go in but when I dig into some areas of the garden it’s just like dust. There’s a bit of light rain forecast for Thursday but I don’t think it will make much difference. Enough moaning! Not a lot of time for gardening this weekend but I’m off next week (sadly the Non-Gardener isn’t) so I’ll be planting and watering like mad. Bliss!

1. I’ve  sown quite a few perennials this spring so they’re not ready for planting out yet. I also kept some back to sow in the autumn to ease the pressure on the glasshouse space. I love growing annuals as well but am not very good at working out how many I need to fill the spaces. I’m sure these will all fit in somewhere. I’d like to say that this is all of them but there might be a few more tucked into other corners of the garden.

2.  Talking of corners, this is a very shady corner at the back of the house. The shade comes from a large and beautiful Golden Privet (more a tree than a shrub). I removed an old and sad looking Griselinia littoralis ‘Variegata’ a while back and am very pleased with the new planting. The Fatshedera just needs to cover the fence panel.

3. An arch and trellis was replaced earlier in the year by the N-G and the new plants are slowly progressing up it. Clematis ‘Jackmanii Superba’ was left in place and I wanted another Clematis to go with it. To keep life easy I wanted the same pruning group but I also wanted one I haven’t got/grown before. Enter C. ‘Diana’s Delight’. It’s supposed to be shorter than Jackmanii but will, hopefully, put on a bit more height before flowering next year. Beautiful flowers though.

4. I’ve struggled for years to grow Delphiniums but had some reasonable success last year, mostly down to the dry conditions keeping SnS at bay I think. Bar one, they’ve reappeared this year  but the first one to flower has a very short spike. I hope the others wait a bit before doing their thing. The Aquilegia, on the other hand, is a lot taller than I thought it would be! No pleasing some people.

5. So many plants have greenfly at the moment and I’ve started noticing some blackfly as well. I had no ladybirds last year so no larvae this spring. When I was taking a picture of Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’ I was very happy to see this little ladybird  I hope she has some friends with her.

6.  The Alliums are opening and add such structure to the border.  I’m finding that ‘Purple Sensation’ doesn’t last very long but ‘Christophii’ is bulking up well. I can’t wait for the leaves to die back.

That’s my Six for this week. I’ve made a start pulling Forget-Me-Nots out but need to make that a priority job for next week. Enjoy your garden this Bank Holiday weekend and don’t forget to look at all he other Sixes, courtesy of our host at https://thepropagatorblog,wordpress.com/7