#SixOnSaturday: A Late Flush

 We have had a very late start to the winter this year, with one or two ground frosts this week which still haven't affected the tender plants. I picked 5 courgettes on Tuesday, lined them up and put the photo on Twitter. Knowing there would probably be a frost this week, I photographed the amazing flowers you can see below on Tuesday when they seemed to be at their peak. I think what has happened is that plants struggled with the drought conditions in the summer, and have really enjoyed having sufficient water to grow properly and have had a late flush of flowering. I hope a bit of early photography isn't seen as cheating, I thought I'd go out and check them this morning to see if they do still look like this, but will do so later, I need to go out now. So let's make a start, with a perennial poppy, just look at this:

followed by this plant below which grows in a tub by the house, it's not reliably hardy and dies back to almost nothing in the winter and takes quite a long time to recover and look like this. I've forgotten its name, it came from Rumsey Gardens. I should go and look it up but having had a flu jab and a Covid booster yesterday I'm feeling a bit sleepy.

This Alstromeria really struggled in the summer, even with some watering, but looks lovely now

And isn't this amazing? Orlaya grandiflora looking quite small but it looks as though this has grown form seed produced this year. The pink blur is from Erigeron Karvinskianus pink form.

It's taken quite a while for this Salvia involucrata cutting to flower, but it's doing so quite well this week. It can survive by the back wall of the house, but maybe not further down the garden. I've got one indoors just in case they are all killed by frost.

I hesitated to include the Nerine because we'd expect it to be flowering now and some of the Agastache were looking good. But the Nerine is looking fabulous.

So that's my six from a garden still with lots of interest, and with lots more bulb planting , greenhouse tidying and perennial splitting to be done. I wonder what The Propagator has chosen this week? Do click on the link to see his choices and what other gardeners have picked this week. I also wonder how we're gardening to help the planet? Has Cop 26 made any difference to your way of gardening, or were you doing it anyway?