Six on Saturday – 16th April 2022

I am determined to get my Six on Saturday post right this week so I’m getting it in early! Lots of new growth and signs of Spring in the garden this week as the days lengthen and temperatures rise. I’ve taken the risk on bringing a few of the more tender things out of the greenhouse, starting to make room in there for other things. The last of the potatoes have gone in and I’ve planted out the peas which I started off in guttering a few weeks ago (no photo as not very interesting to look at!) Check out the other Six on Saturday posts from other gardeners via The Propagator’s page, http://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com .

First apple blossom bud of the year. Every year, Chief Engineer gets better and better at the twice yearly prune. I’ll make a gardener of him yet.

I’m not brilliant at butterfly identification but given the amount of ivy in our garden I’d say this was a Holly Blue. Tiny, beautiful, and the most vivid bright blue when it opened its wings (which it resolutely refused to do for the camera).

Big, fat, juicy iris buds. I can’t wait for this iris to open. The rich deep purple is like velvet and the scent is heavenly, like no other floral scent I’ve ever smelled. Given to me by my mother, from a house owned by a friend, and a place I loved – these also have huge sentimental value for me.

I know I keep posting photos of tulips but these just captivate me. With the evening sun behind them last night they glowed like stained glass. I’ll definitely be planting more of these, I want to fill this bed with these two (Abu Hassan and Purple Dream).

The fierce sunshine we’ve had (I’m not complaining!) has fried the earliest tulips but the later ones are coming on to plug the gaps – these yellow ones in particular (no idea of the variety) always come up last and stay the longest. I love it when the forget-me-nots join them – the blue haze is a fabulous gap-filler and their scent is the essence of Spring (the bees love it too).

It looks a little battle-weary and it probably needs repotting but I’m very pleased with this brugmansia. A present from my mum, bought in Lidl (last of the big spenders, my mum), it is now about 6 years old and has never been this big or had so many leaves so early in the year before. In previous years I’ve hauled it into a greenhouse to over-winter, but this year I just kept it outdoors and kept it covered with a heavy duty fleece bag whenever temperatures dipped below 5 Celsius (fleece bags from Gardening Naturally, http://gardening-naturally.com . I can’t recommend this company highly enough, they’re truly excellent). It has some woody patches on the stems but it still looks healthier than it usually does at this time of year – I normally have to lose a lot of the height in pruning out wood that’s died back. It looks happier than its smaller offspring which was kept in the greenhouse as an insurance policy. I’ll start feeding it, repot and tidy it up a bit, and have high hopes of big blooms earlier in the Summer than usual. It has tended to flower at the end of the Summer/start of Autumn, just as the weather changes, spoiling the flowers and making it too cold and wet to sit outdoors and enjoy the heady evening scent. Fingers crossed I can coax a better, earlier performance out of it this year!