Hello and welcome to this weeks SOS.
Well after a very wet week last week this weeks has been a bit more Spring like in weather if a little bit on the chilly side. If you believe the weather forecast for today then it is forecast for snow but I am sure that will be in the hills.
Gardening wise has been limited as I have been busy at work. On Thursday I got the chance to work at the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh. I had to move a couple of IT systems from one cabinet to another but unfortunately the job turned into a bit of a nightmare as I managed to knock the Broadband off for the sales office. On the plus side however there was plenty of places to hide and relax!
Here is my SOS.
1. Tulip Albion Star
My first flowering hybrid tulip of the year and wow what a beauty. Star in the name and star by nature. I have no idea if it is supposed to flower this early but interestingly enough it is in the same pot a Tulip Polychroma which I featured last week and is an early flowerer.
2. Grand opening of the “Aeonium House”
I took delivery this week of the small wooden greenhouse I bought from Aldi (£59.99) last year and assembled it on Thursday night. I celebrated the opening by having a cup of tea and wondering where the 2 screws should go that I had left. The size of this is just perfect and it should be more than adequate to put my Aeoniums in over winter. As greenhouses go it is certainly on a small scale and I don’t think we could compare it to the new ones that will be built at the Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh over the next few years New glasshouse RBGE. This looks fantastic I can’t wait till it opens.
3. Orostachys Japonica
I took delivery of a new Orostachys this week and to say I am excited about it is an understatement. Orostachys Japononica is a native of Japan, China and Korea. Also know as Rock Pine it is a herb that is Biennial/Monicarpic. I bought 2 plants on Ebay from Spain and I have managed to split them into over 20 different mini plants. The flower spikes look immense.
4. Primula Bellerina Pink Ice
The first double primula I have bought and it will not be the last. I bought this when up at Branklyn Gardens last year. The flower is a wonderful kaleidoscope of couloir that funnily enough looks like Pink Ice!
5. Sempervivum Virgil
This Sempervivum is a wonderful shade of light purple. All the Sempervivums are really coming into their own this time of the year. Soon they will be producing babies and some of them will start producing a flower spike and start to flower and ultimately die but not before producing babies.
6. Choiysa Tenatra Mexican Orange Blossom
First time growing tbis hopefully it will start to flower soon. Foliage wise the leaves do not dissapoint. I have a number of shrubs dotted around my garden nowand they really have changed the dynamics of the garden especially the evergreen ones. I wasn’t really a fan of shrubs as I think some of them can grow to big but I am sure after some strategic pruning I will keep them in check.
Well that is my SOS for today.
It looks like it is going to be a washout today. Luckily it is the final weekend of the six nations. So I will be spending most of today in front of the telly. C’mon Englang and c’mon Ireland. Hopefully things will brighten up tomorrow.
As always to find out how six on Saturday works please follow the following link The Propagator. The don of Six on Saturday
Sedums, Dahlias and Hayfever 
At first glance, I thought you were the one who built the wooden frame. I hadn’t read it yet….However it looks great! That’s what I miss here. Nice picture of this combo of aeonium in it.
Is the Choisya planted in the ground? In this case, next year you will have to move it. Mine (about 8y) is a ball of 2+ m in diameter. (and the flowers will arrive soon since new light green stems)
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Alas Fred I am not a good Carpenter. Yes the Choisya is planter in the ground. I will see how it goes.
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The Aeonium house will be so useful next winter and will look good in your garden as well. Choisya is a favourite of mine. I love the smell of the foliage and the flowers are so pretty. In years when I don’t prune it back it often repeat flowers.
Enjoy the rugby.
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Thanks. I will have to have a smell of my Choisya leaves. I can have a bad sense of smell so might have to get close to it.
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I agree with the other comments. Your Aeonium is quite impressive and I am sure you will be happy with the Mexican Orange Blossom – mine needs to be cut back regularly but it seems to maintain a reasonable shape. Lovely “Virgil” sempervivum ……takes me back to Latin O level a LONG time ago!
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Thanks Granny. I never took Latin wasn’t the norm ooop North.
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I admit, it was/is a dead language but I quite enjoyed it. Much to my surprise, one of my grandsons took it at GCSE a couple of years ago!
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Aeonium house is looking good – do they prefer to be under cover. Love that tulip too!
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No only under cover on the Winter and cold spells. In the summer you have to be careful that direct sunlight does not scorch the leaves to much. They mostly come from the Canary Islands so need that type of climate. Although the sun scorching thing confuses me.
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That is a very lovely tulip. How lovely to have it so early in the garden. I think all my tulips are late flowerers. I must be patient!
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The tulip is a lovely shade. Will you have a little heat in your new glass house for the aeoniums? I have posted about my succulents this week, and have felt they needed heat on days it is going to dip below freezing.
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Yes it is south facing so gets the sun. Glasshouse is a generous description of my Aeonium House it is just this https://www.aldi.co.uk/small-wooden-greenhouse/p/097341253270300. I do not put artificial heat in with my succulents. I had them in a cold frame over winter and all I did was put some foam pads I got from work underneath the plants.
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You would do better to have something insulating to put over the top of your greenhouse when it gets really cold. You don’t want to insulate the plants from the ground as that will be warmer than the air on a frosty night and the plants lose heat upwards by radiation. The voice of hard learned experience.
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Thanks for the wonderful advice. I have got fleece cut read to go on top of the plants of the cold frame but it never got cold enough this winter. Hardly any weather from the east.
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Oh I think I may have posted 4 times on your blog!
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Great Aeonium House! We had a Mexican Orange Blossom or two at our old house. I found they needed chopping back maybe twice a year but it was easy enough to keep within bounds. Lovely Herby scent when chopped too.
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Congratulations on the aeonium house. It looks really great! I know you’ve posted about RBGE before but I didn’t know you get to work there sometimes. Lucky you!
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Tulips already! Well jel. I like your mini greenhouse.
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Yes. J am surprised to see the Tulip flowering so early. Made use of the Greenhouse this morning because of all the snow we had.
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Are you having an Aeonium housewarming party? Looks good but two screws left over? Come on, you work in IT. You know that if you take a computer to pieces you will always have spare screws when you put it back together. I never came across anything that, even if I’d taken it apart ten times, didn’t yield spare screws the eleventh time. And it never fell apart!
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Ha true John true. The best of it was that afterwards I put a potting bench together and I was missing 2 screws. and I could not find the 2 which were left over!
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That primula is so beautiful.
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Thank you. There really is some crackers.
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I like your Choisya but it will get very big for that spot
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Again, you have some odd ones. Mexican orange is an old fashioned plant from the 1950s. There is a bit of it at work that was planted much later, perhaps in the 1970s, but that is not common at all. I do not propagate it, but probably should. There is so much shade here, and not enough shade tolerant plants to go around.
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Nothing odd about it Tony it was a cheap plant from the Suoemarket😂. Hope all is well.
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