How To Choose Spring Bulbs for Your Garden

After the cold of winter when the garden is more sparse with flowers and trees in leaf, spring bulbs offer you a chance to welcome the new year with a flush of flowers. The majority of favorite spring flowers are bulbs, and can be planted in autumn to overwinter, and to burst fourth in spring as the earth warms up slightly.

1. Choosing the Perfect Spring Bulbs. In September, nurseries and plant sellers begin to stock the spring flowering bulbs for cusomters to buy. They have seductive pictures on the packets with sawdust in the packaging hiding the bulbs. I am thinking of daffodils, tulips, crocuses, iris, hyacinths, fritillaria, bluebells, and snowdrops. The best thing about bulbs is if they are left after flowering, they will naturalize and will grow even more bulbs, which you can lift in a few years when they get crowded. A gardener on the radio said he has Dutch tulips that had been flowering every year for 25 years since he moved in!
2. Working out the Colors you Would Like. The colors available for tulips are truly astounding (colors like red, yellow, orange, and even black). You can get parrot-shaped ones, frilly-edged ones, and even tulips that look like roses. I think a two-tone color scheme works well with tulips. Daffodils are beautiful nodding in the wind, with their yellow trumpet flowers. They look good planted en masse, and of all the bulbs, will be the largest. A spring is not a spring without daffodils and the smaller narcissus. Crocuses are also available in masses of colors. They are not as tall as the tulips or daffodils, so they will need to be forward in a planting scheme. Irises come in masses of colors, as the name implies. (In Greek mythology, Iris is the goddess of the rainbow.) Bluebells and snowdrops are blue and white, respectively. They look good planted en masse.
3. Where to Grow: Beds, Borders or in Pots. Spring bulbs can be planted in any of these places. I have planted daffodils in borders across the garden. They look wonderful with yellow and green. I also planted small Dutch iris before in the borders, along with chionodoxa. My mother used to have daffodils in pots that have been growing for years. She left them in year after year and they still flowered. Tulips, snowdrops, and bluebells will look equally at home within pots as much as in borders or beds. The beds need the flowers ordered in height size so they can all be seen. It is easy to grow this springtime carpet of colors in all places.
4. Bringing Them Home. Once you have bought your selection of spring bulbs home with you, sit and look at the pictures on the packets. They will contain information about how deep the bulbs need to be planted. Most bulbs can just be planted with no need for the addition of fertilizer. I wait until I'm motivated before taking the labeling card off from the plastic bag or net the bulbs are stored in, generally outside in the garden. Keep the bulbs near the labels. If you have hundreds of bulbs, it's easy to forget which is which if the bulbs are of similar size.
5. Arranging the Bulbs on the Surface. I start by putting the bulbs on the soil surface between the normal shrubs and trees to aid my vision of what it might look like in 5 months time! Once you have planted them, the soil will be bare. I think about height and spread and the mixture of colors. Daffodils are planted close together in drifts, as are the bluebells and snowdrops. You can put them in shady areas or beneath trees, which is their preferred habit! I would keep the colors simple and not contrast too much. You can be loud and mix tulip and crocus colors if you want a riot of color.
6. Planting the Bulbs. You can use a small trowel or a pointed stick (I had a elongated stick with one narrow point) to make the hole for the bulb to sit in. Generally, the pointy bit of the bulb is up, and the flat-bottomed bit is the root. Bulbs are naturally primed to grow correctly whatever way you plant them. Daffodils are generally planted to a depth that is twice the height of the bulb; tulips need to be three times as deep as the bulb. All the bulbs should come with instructions. I gardened on clay and could not get the depth of some bulbs ((six inches) but they still grew fine, despite the instructions. I would move along the row digging a hole, putting the bulb in, then covering it up. I recheck after I have finished to make sure there are no other bulbs left on the surface!
7. Wait for them to grow. That's it! They are in the soil, go through the winter, and as spring warms the earth up, they will burst forth from the ground. The hardest part of the "how to" is choosing the bulbs from the thousands that are available. They can be planted in the soil as is, and left to do what they are primed to do.