BOLSTER BULBS WITH EXTRA COLOUR
The inspirational Pick the perfect planting partners and your garden will soon pop with some spring zing!
I’ve been lucky enough to see a lot of spring gardens over the years. Some big, some small, but irrespective of size, the best ones have a running theme. Instead of just relying on star performers, such as bulbs and hellebores, for early bursts of colour, the best gardens employ a bevvy of backing dancers. By that I mean the most successful and colour-rich plantings make use of evergreen perennials as a
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I made use of the idea when I was running Chelsea Physic Garden to show off our snowdrops, scillas, puschkinia, crocus and Iris reticulata. By growing evergreen perennials in contrasting colours around the bulbs, their star power was increased and the colour display elevated.
Here are a few of my suggested pairings for evergreen perennials you can plant now as a backdrop to emerging bulbs.
The cliché plant to grow around snowdrops
Ophiopogon planiscapus flowers with Polystichum setiferum ‘Herrenhausen’. Its foliage has an almost mosslike quality and mid-green freshness, perfect as a backing dancer to the snowdrop star.
This li le, blue-flowered bulb has a habit of naturalising and spreading, especially in gravel or on free-draining soils. It looks cheery en masse, but a few spots of contrasting colour really help it shine. Carex ‘Evergold’ is an obvious choice thanks to the gold stripes on its short hummock of grassy foliage.
These tiny irises only flower for about three weeks in late winter/early spring so you don’t want to miss them. Being both very short (10cm/4in) and dark flowered, they can easily get lost if simply set against sodden soil. The solution here is silver foliage in the form of the squat,
Cerastium tomentosum.
Festuca glauca,
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Make sure your plant is moist and remove any weeds. Cut off weak and damaged shoots and shorten other shoots back to two buds.