Six on Saturday 30/04/22

Yet another dry week here and cracks are appearing throughout the borders, especially in the front garden. Watering the pots has become a very regular job along with the contents of the glasshouse. It’s also been quite cold at night, just 2 degrees C last night and no higher than 4 degrees the rest of the week, and so I’m taking a lot of pots out of the glasshouse in the morning and then putting them all back in in the evening. I’m looking forward to it to warming up a bit so that I can empty the cold frame of the hardened off plants and start putting the next lot in. Hopefully, the night temperature should be more favourable from tomorrow – if the BBC weather app is telling the truth.

• This weeks Six is going to start with Tulips, as I’m sure many other Sixes will also be doing, but you can’t have too many Tulips. I’ve grown a lot of mine in mixed pots this year. It’s worked well with bedding (Bellis, Pansies, Cyclamen and Primroses) colour since the autumn and bulbs since February but I don’t really like all of the old foliage with the Tulips so I think I’ll go back to Tulips mostly on their own next time.

Outside the back door from left to right – ‘Menton’ and ‘Sarah Raven’, ‘Queensday’, ‘Whispering Dream’ and ‘Royal Georgette’

Further along from ‘Royal Georgette’ is my new favourite, ‘Palmyra’.

• Staying with bulbs – I planted N. ‘Bella Estrella’ in the Dahlia bed and they’ve finally flowered. Sadly, several flowering stems were broken off the other night – I’m guessing cats were fighting in the garden. It’s a split corona narcissus and has a lovely scent.

• Clematis ‘Guernsey Cream’ opened its first flowers before Easter and then had a rest. The sun earlier this week finally persuaded the remaining buds to open.

• On the subject of Clematis….. in the front garden I have five climbing roses on posts and each was planted with a Clematis. It can be very dry in this part of the garden and I don’t water out here at all so not all the Clematis survived. One that did was C. ‘Betty Corning’, although it struggled for many years. Then a couple of years ago Betty finally got her roots down and took off and there’s no stopping her now. The roses had a hard prune in February and R. ‘Graham Thomas’ was being overrun by Betty.

I want the Rose to get larger so that it doesn’t get swamped by the Clematis, as happened last year.

There’s a Rose in there somewhere. Taken last summer

Yesterday I decided to cut Betty back down by about two thirds. I think this could be a new pruning technique but it may not catch on. I often pinch out the tops of Clematis shoots. It delays flowering a little but results, I think (hope), in more shoots. Here’s the after picture. I’ll keep you posted.

• The ferns are looking great with their unfurling fronds. The fern wall is greening up well but I’ll save that for a week or two yet. Last summer I bought a fern I had wanted for a long time. I first came across it in a garden I used to work in and fell in love with it. However, that garden was four and a half acres, my garden is very small and the fern is Woodwardia orientalis ssp formosana which can grow to over one metre. How long I can keep it will depend how well it grows. Two new fronds have recently emerged.

• I thought I’d finish with a couple of pictures of the long border which has turned rather blue.

Looking along the border towards the shadier end

And looking back the other way.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend. I’ll be back later to see what’s looking good in other Sixers gardens at https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/