Well what a mixed bag weather wise, rain and more rain and then bloody cold! That said I do like the cold and even more at this time of year, heading into deepest winter, it does feel a lot like winter now. In the past week I have been on a little working trip down to Cornwall, mainly to speak to the Cornish Garden Society but I decided to use my time wisely and spent a glorious day at the Eden Project on the Tuesday and then around Burncoose of Southdown Nursery on Wednesday and these are where my 6 on Saturday are indeed coming from! Would also like to say it was great to meet a fellow blogger and 6 on Saturday contributer Jim Stevens, wonderful to meet you at last fella!
Ahh the tree dahlia, Dahlia imperialis, is indeed the mightiest of all the dahlias and one that also flowers very late in the year, at well over 15ft tall, it is indeed tree like and these ones just outside the Mediterranean biodomes are the first ones I have seen in flower and did they look gorgeous, well worth the wait to see them in their full glory!
The Mediterranean dome is my favourite of them both, I think mainly as I can relate more to the plants that grow in there more than the tropical plants in the other dome, but also I think it’s more than that, it’s the bird sound echoing around the dome, love the olives, love the vines, just love the place!
Ahh the parakeet flower (Heliconia psittacorum) from the tropical dome, a dash of paradise!
Now for a plant that just doesn’t look real does! Looks like it’s been made from China and highly glazed, well it’s the pineapple ginger, tapeinochilos ananasse, so beautiful isn’t
Had to add this handknitted jersey for a tree fern outside, they have added these to the weaker tree ferns to protect them more from the winter cold and damp, Just loved them!!
To me the winter is over when the daffodils come out and umm I am going to have to change that thought! This early form called Rijinvelds early sensation is the earliest I have ever seen out in flower within the uk quite strange seeing it out in flower in early December, with the worse of the winter to
I hope you enjoyed my 6 on Saturday from The Eden Project. If you did please checkout other people’s 6 on the memes founder website https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/ I love seeing other people’s plants and what’s happening in their gardens. Why not give it ago yourself next week and give me a shout so I can take a look
Until next week, have fun in the garden
Eden’s fab. Lovely that you met up with Jim too!
Really enjoyed the walk around, hoping to do a bigger blog on them, it was lovely to met Jim, just wish we had a little more time to chat
Beautiful pictures ! Some of them could be among your greeting cards..😉 My preference goes to the pineapple ginger !
Thank you 😊 yes one or two may end up on them lol, it’s almost unreal isn’t
Immediately Googled pineapple ginger & decided I didn’t have room for an 8′ houseplant, no matter how beautiful. Loved the tree fern jackets. Think one of those would let me grow the pineapple ginger outside? Maybe not. Great exotic bunch this week.
Lol it’s pretty massive but for some reason the flowers are close to the ground, was keep to about 3ft so you may have room 😉 lol the jackets are brilliant added a reminder to this time next year to do something on tree ferns and will use the full range I saw👍
That sweater is funny!
Tree dahlias used to be popular here, but now, I do not see them anymore. I just realized that when I saw your picture. How odd. Once established, they should not die off unless removed. Mine was a double white, which was the only one I had ever seen like it. All the others look like yours. I like white, but it was not a pretty as the single pink, and I think that it was weaker.
That’s strange, are dahlias as a whole are popular? Never seen the double white, would love to see pic
The big colorful dahlias are quite popular in the Santa Clara Valley, especially among those of us of Italian descent, or related ethnicities. They are less popular on the coast. However, the tree dahlia, which is rare in the Santa Clara Valley used to be quite popular around Santa Cruz. I do not see it as much as I used to. There were only two types, either single or double pink. When I got my double white, it was the only one I had ever seen. So, I suppose that they were popular, but there was not much variety to choose from.
Ahh I wondered if it was because dahlias had lost their popularity? They just started to recover a little bit over here now thankfully 👍
The two are like two completely different plants. Those of us who grow the big flashy dahlias do not know about the tree dahlia. The tree dahlias that I remember in Santa Cruz seemed to be the only dahlias in the gardens, and were sometimes in rather unkempt gardens, like callas, cannas and euryops daisies. The annual dahlias are a third type, that are popular with other warm season annuals. They all seem to be segregated and grown for different effects.
Love the handknitted jersey!
Brilliant aren’t they 👍
Call my Phillistine (but not Phyllis) but I don’t like Eden. People ask me why and I can’t put my finger on what it is that turns me off; maybe it’s the size of the fake climates they’ve created in those cavernous biomes. Or is it jealousy? I honestly don’t know.
There was a dahlia fanatic at the other end of Swansea Bay with a special liking for tree dahlias. Every year he’d plant loads (I mean hundreds) of dahlias in a field including, I think, about 100 of the tree types. The lower ones provided lots of colour (and he used to propagate for sale too) but the tree dahlias tended to flower, if they flowered at all, about a day before the frost knocked them all back and he dug them up again, Still, I suppose it kept him out of mischief.
Nah we all have different tastes 😊 I am the same with heligan, I visited it before it was fully restored, it was magical just seemed to lose its magic for me after it was all done
Lol yes they always seem to flower just before the frost appears, never seen them flower before