It seems that everyone on Twitter is waxing lyrical about ordering their new seasons bulbs and getting excited at the thought of planting them. Am I the only one who hates planting bulbs?
My first problem is that the ground is usually rock hard in September and October so making planting holes (some do need to be quite deep) is hard work. This year its almost impossible to dig to the right depths. Incidentally, there are many people who don’t plant their bulbs at the correct depth.
Then, having decided where to plant, I start to dig and immediately find existing bulbs right where I plan to put the new ones, and damage them and get cross. This is quite a large garden, how come I keep trying to put bulbs in the same place? I never plant them singly, life’s too short, but try to make decent sized holes and put in up to 10 bulbs together. This is all hard work in my opinion and when they are all planted you have to wait 6 months for your reward, that’s if the weather is fine enough to be able to walk round and see them.
Years ago I decided to avoid all this autumn nonsense of digging in hard ground and slicing up existing bulbs. Now when the order arrives I plant them into pots. When it is spring and all the other bulbs have shown themselves in the garden I can see where the gaps are and that’s when I do my planting.
I too think doing bulbs in mixed beds is a chore and a bind. Not that keen on bothering. Around shrubs it works, but I divide my herbaceous plants and also add annuals to most gardens I am ever involved with.
The show is wonderful when bulbs are all out in spring. Tulips I love, but really they are annuals, with the exception of a very few varieties – Tulipa APPELDOORN in either yellow or in red being persistent. At least that has been my experience in gardening all around the country. In general the show lasts 10 days tops in most years. I prefer to use them in containers, and use small bulbous subjects such as Ipheion uniflorum, snowdrops, Cyclamen hederifolium, around shrubs or border edges.
Narcissi do persist for me, and I use smaller to medium sized cultivars, such as Narcissus triandrus THALIA in white, and N. x cyclamineus FEBRUARY GOLD. I like N. Tete-a-Tete, but it is generally riddled with virus, although still strong enough to persist, it passes on infection to less hardy varieties I find.
Part of the reason for using smaller forms is that they resist spring gales, and look more in scale with a small bed or plot. The tall ones get scythed down by the wind more often than not.
I was reading recently about work being done at mamanging wild dandelions to give the same kind of spring-time show as daffodils, at Sheffield Universities very innovative landscape department. This under the aegis of Nigel Dunnett. The trick is managing these invasive plants. Have to say the early wild lawn weeds like dandelions ( mostly Taraxacum officinale agg.) and wild lawn daisies ( Bellis perennis), tend to give a rather wonderful show. Just to add a little controversy to the mix.
Interesting what you said about dandelions, I don’t think I would ever consider them garden worthy, but then I don’t like variegated ground elder or dark leaved plantain. Nor do I like the seemingly fashionable white willow herb.