Final fling Why the great rush to plant bulbs out for spring? Frank Ronan tarries among the pleasures of autumn bulbs, from colchicums and crocuses to cyclamens and nerines
While at this time of year most of us are scrambling to buy and plant out bulbs for spring, Frank finds time to stop and marvel at the beauty of autumn bulbs and corms
We associate bulbs and spring because that is when they have the bare earth to themselves
Autumn is a manic time for bulbs. Either you are bulb rich and time poor and unopened boxes are sitting in the boot room, or you haven’t ordered enough or ordered in time and friends are making you jealous with reports of their unopened boxes and now you are trawling the internet for the last 50 of anything acceptable in existence. It is all about spring and our imaginations have leapfrogged the winter months. It is not that we are unaware of October’s charm, but we look up to the glowing trees and across to the burning horizons to see them. It is swansong in our minds when, really, the plants themselves have no such philosophy.
Perhaps we associate bulbs and spring because that is when they have the bare earth to themselves. Now it is all a little bit fusty and decayed at ground level and it is a hard task for a mere crocus to freshen a summer’s growth decaying. But that is simply a matter of presentation, which is our job and not that of the bulb. When autumn bulbs are done well there is nothing better.
First to come are the colchicums, so early that their time is really late summer. To refer to them as autumn crocuses is misleading, since they are allied to the lilies, while crocuses come under the iris umbrella. If you really need a common name for them, naked boys is the least resistible. The favourite is the extremely vulgar double called ‘Waterlily’, which adorns the freshly shorn meadow in increasing quantities. Tasteful intentions to acquire more refined and unusual species come to nothing when it comes to pressing the order button. Why have one bulb of some exquisite thing that might not like you when, for the same price, you can have five old friends who love you? And if you pick them for the house, where they look really astonishing, it will only encourage them, like sweet peas, to make more.
As soon as the colchicums are finished the meadow is given another cut if at all possible, to allow the actual autumn crocuses to look their best. There are various species to be had but, so far, I’ve stuck to the saffron crocus, C. sativus. It likes me and it increases and I like it having the meadow to itself. It is a good purple, beautifully enhanced by the saffron stamens, which I’ve yet to attempt to pick and dry. If there were another bit of meadow I’d like to give C. vallicola a go, purely because of a night spent sleeping on a carpet of them, high in the Kaçkar Mountains, long ago. Practically, it would probably be better to try C. scharojanii, which comes from wetter and lower and is a better colour (deep yellow to the other’s white), but a romantic association is hard to shake.
I’ve yet to be really serious about nerines. The only one I’ve managed to keep is a ‘Zeal Giant’, which was a present from a proper plantsperson and has to live in a pot because I don’t dare condemn it to the fate of all the others that have vanished over the years. It is almost certainly my fault for not choosing the correct sites and I need to think about better ones (the foot of the south-facing wall in the fruit garden is screaming “Here!”). ‘Mark Fenwick’ is one I’ve always been inclined towards, though having mostly admired it in the west of Scotland it might be safer to persist with ordinary N. bowdenii.
And then there are the heartbreaking cyclamens of autumn. I have no idea why they are so touching; perhaps because the nodding heads have little ears or because all year you have been accidentally disturbing the toadlike corms and resetting them with fingers crossed. Or because of their valiant struggle with autumn debris. The only solution is to plant more and yet more until we are overwhelmed from below by Cyclamen hederifolium.