Six on Saturday…
Six on Saturday is part of a blog hop that happens with The Propagator, a garden blog I enjoy.
A full day in the garden today and where I found my six. Not always successes either…
Scabiosa. Can’t remember which one, but I adore it. It’s fully fledged flowers are matronly, healthy, and show-offs.
Agapanthus. Common as muck here in Australia and often seen as a noxious weed. Very successful for hedging a house in a dry super-coastal environment and is the perfect mix of blue and white. BUT – when the painter is due, we have had to slice and dice the plants away from the walls, so the painter can do his job. Awful snail colonies.
Strawberries. Picked up 6 unlabelled plants in the local hardware store. They’re very fragile and I reckon they’ll die.
Heuchera. Another unlabelled plant from the hardware store. But suspect it’s Heuchera Black Beauty. Love it in white gardens.
Erigeron Karvinskianus. The Seaside Daisy. I’m remodelling under one of the willows with anything that is hardy and can cope with a howling westerly in summer and winter. This was a cutting and it’s booming! Suspect I’ll regret it.
Auriculas. I have two varieties from an aquaintance who breeds them. I adore them but suspect they might hate being at sealevel when they were bred in subalpine conditions. A.Jorvik and A. Ferntree Border from Pen-Lan Plants
Great choices, I lost my agapanthus when I took it out its pot and put it in the garden .
They love Oz, Libby. Not surprisingly being a South African plant. But my heaven, they hoard the snails! And on the farm, they are also rat homes and therefore snake homes! Ugh!
Thats not so good ..hate slugs and snails …….
bleurgh
Lovely to hear about your spring as we hurtle into autumn in the UK. Particularly love your auricula. So pretty.
Thanks Katharine. The nice thing about gardening and gardeners is that globally we can all take joy in each other’s creations.
Considering you’re on the far side of the world that’s a very familiar feeling six to a northern hemisphere gardener, even down to the howling westerlies, except for being six months out. Aggies are snail magnets here too, not so much rats and snakes though, mercifully.
Hi Jim. Yes, I suspect we all suffer the same slings and arrows. Fun, isn’t it? Thank you for commenting.
Scabious have become a firm favourite for me. I love the intricate detail, and that they attract the bees.
Hello Ali. In the last twelve months here in Australia, I’ve become aware of a company selling the most marvellous perennials. They are called Antique Perennials and their stock is wonderfully healthy. For me, just managing to get my mind and brain on how I want my garden to look, it’s wonderful to be able to buy traditional stock for borders rather than the fashionable broadleafed grasses that every modern suburban house in Australia seems to have sequestered in a bed of coloured gravel! Re the bees, I’d love to have a domestic hive in my orchard but am allergic when stung. Not sure about the two going together. So I rely on plants for bees greatly.
So much to enjoy in this post, Prue. It’s fun to get a taste of your early spring. The auriculas are mesmerizing! Even though they are completely unrelated and totally different texture, they bring hellebores to mind.
I love hellebores! Have been collecting a few double and treble whites and blacks from a wonderful breeder here in Australia. They are in our small ‘matchbox’ garden in the city (I did a tiny post to match the tiny garden a couple of posts ago). I love having gardens to view in the northern hemisphere – the turn and turnabout of the seasons is so inspiring and my gosh, thank heaven for blogs and social media! Thanks for commenting. Cheers.
Hello Prue, so nice to get a dose of spring. Hope we’ll see you again soon for another, I am waiting with some trepidation for our first frost date, normally about mid october. After that it’s pretty much downhill for the garden till next spring.
Hi Jonathan. It’s lovely to have you drop by as I now have the opportunity to thank you muchly for providing a way for me to find so many wonderful garden blogs to follow. I can’t remember how I found The Propagator but it’s been a journey of discovery ever since. As i said on Facebook, the longest garden path I have walked! Spring is wonderful. Only thing is it’s incredibly dry, very warm and thus very short. Plants are blooming and blowing out very quickly. Already the lawns are heading, which means the brown of summer won’t be far behind. As I look out the window now, I can see the apples and pears are almost finished flowering and the almonds have good sized nuts forming up. The huge liquid ambers are almost fully in leaf and hordes of native bees are now working the flowers of the willow trees. As I say, it’s all happening very fast. Anyway – must away. Thank you again for my weekly walks through the (mostly) northern hemisphere.
I’ve been telling myself every year for the last 10 that I need to get some aggies for my garden. After the above discussion, sorta glad I haven’t as yet. Do the snails/slugs simply hide in them? I don’t remember seeing the ones here ravaged by the local mollusks, not do yours seem to be. Hope the strawberries rally. Nothing like a fresh strawberry. Unless it’s a fresh pear or some nice almonds . . . you get my drift.
Hi Lora, the snails and slugs use them as a huge cool, damp home. On the farm, we are talking a great big square 12 feet by maybe 20 feet directly in front of the verandah, which is filled with blue and white aggies that look amazing when they are in flower. They are hardy enough to walk across the top of the plants without denting a thing. Underneath, it’s cool and dark which makes it a perfect home for rodents. And of course the rodents are perfect food for the snakes. Twice in the last couple of summers, tigersnakes (highly venomous Australian snakes) have slithered across from the hot lawns into the relative shade and food-filled oasis of that patch of aggies. This year, a little bobcat/ditchdigger is coming to dig all the aggies out and something safer and more suited to the rigorous climate of the country will be planted in their place. I haven’t a clue how it should be landscaped or with what! The strawberries are hanging in there as we had rain today and they’ve perked up. It’ll be us or the parrots who get to the almonds first and as for the pears, we net them all and they’re yummy! Pear paste and pear chutney are lovely too!