Six On Saturday – 21 June 2025

Six on Saturday – join our host Jim and our lovely community of gardeners sharing six things from your garden in the last week. If you fancy joining in with us you can check out the particpants’ guide too.

Not much going on in my garden right now (for reasons I’ll discuss soon) so just a quick run round today in the heat. Won’t be going back out there any time soon – it’s very, very hot! Although the forecast this morning does seem to suggest a thunderstorm this afternoon and a break in the heat – fingers crossed.

The flowers on the rhododendron are nearly gone, they’ve turned the very light pink they were when we bought the plant last year (the earlier bright pink was a huge shock). They’ve started to fade and drop off now. It’s been in the shade of the cherry blossom tree for about six weeks now and it seems happier in the shade than it did in full sun.

This creeping thyme has grown back from an abandoned experiment in this bed last year. I just covered the bed in the black material and cut a hole round this plant and the lovage just in the background here. Both have come back with amazing vigour. The colour is even better in real life than the photo shows. There are also a couple of cornflowers in there, self seeded.

This borage is a couple of feet away from the thyme and lovage (you can see them in the background) and is again self seeded. The plant in the photo is actually growing in the gravel path but right behind it you can see some of the plants that have grown up underneath the black fabric. I only realised something was growing under there about 10 days ago – I assumed the bed was empty, but there they are – just waiting for a bit of sunlight.

I’m sure I included this plant very recently but I couldn’t resist. I got a cutting from a friend and even though it’s been a bit neglected this year, it’s starting to flower and loving life again. Its older brother is at the front of the house, in shade most of the afternoon onwards but is also flowering away.

Hydrangeas are pretty much my favourite plant so I’m always happy to see them starting to flower. The middle photo is a paniculata variety I bought last year. It’s amazing how much bigger they are this year. The flowers actually look like we might see that classic conical shape that was missing last year. The right hand flower will eventually turn very light pink, almost white but I love it while it looks lime green like this.

Aquilegia again – the purple one has flowered again. I love the combination of this flower with its leaves. It’s just so beautiful. I’m letting them go to seed this year as I seem to have lost a few plants over the winter so need to collect some seeds to resow next year.

That’s all for this week. Please visit our host, Jim’s blog and leave a comment.