A bit on spring bulbs

Spring bulbs

I’m sure that many would agree that nothing looks healthier than a garden when it’s full of beautiful spring flowering bulbs. With a huge range of colours, shapes and sizes, there are spring flowering bulbs to suit just about every size garden in almost all areas.

Many  of the spring flowering bulbs actually welcome spring itself by just bursting into bloom during the cold early spring months, adding colour to the garden when it is most needed. Other spring flowering bulbs bloom later in spring time, making it feasible to jam the garden with continuous colour over many months.

Planting bulbs is one of my favourite autumn gardening tasks. I do this on crispy, sunny autumn days, knowing that in a few months crocuses, daffodils and tulips will brighten those winter-weary days. If you prepare carefully, the show can last from late winter to June. The beauty of all spring-flowering bulbs is their incredible variety, in size and shape, colour and flowering times.

In autumn when the garden is still full of foliage from the summer's perennials, and shrubs it's hard to remember how desolate the beds can look in early spring.Remember to be sure to plant in abundance so that your springs show has impact.

Spring colour with tulips, daffodils and hyacinths

If there is one definitive bulb that seems to exemplify spring, it has to be the tulip. These bulbs are the crucial visual spring tonic, and there are so many of wonderful varieties to choose from. You can even go for the drama of 'black' tulips.                Next to tulips, daffodils are amongst the best-loved spring bulbs. Dearly loved for their spring bouquet, modern hyacinths come in lots of showy colours, and are easy to force for an indoor display.

More attractive spring flowering bulbs

Tulips may be the for the greater part the most popular of spring flowers, but there are many other charming, easy-to-grow and somewhat lesser-known bulbs, such as windflowers (Anemone blanda), wild hyacinth (Camassia), guinea-hen flower (Fritillaria meleagris), Persian fritillaria, (Fritillaria Persica) and Bulgarian ornamental onion (Nectaroscordum siculum).

Some other must-grow spring bulbs include:

Crocus

Snowdrops
Muscari
Alliums (ornamental onions)

Naturalizing with spring bulbs

For a beautiful flowering lawn, use early, low-growing bulbs such as crocus, mini-daffodil cultivars such as 'Jack Snipe' or 'Tête à Tête' , snowdrops, glory-of-the-snow, scillas and windflowers.
These bulbs create a  lush carpet of colour and will tolerate cutting back by the time the grass needs mowing in early summer.
Naturalize larger, later-blooming daffodils in areas where mowing can be put off for a good six weeks or so after they bloom. A splash of small early-flowering bulbs, such as windflowers, crocus, scilla, snowdrop, glory-of-the snow or grape hyacinth, (which look magnificent) beneath deciduous shrubs and trees such as ash, birch, Japanese cherry, oak, fruit trees and generously flowering crab apples.