Bright bulbs Never fail to have a dazzling displa y
DEEP inside every bulb is a flower bud desperate to burst out and show off.
Bulbs can be used in a variety of situations and because they are so reliable you can plant them now and forget them until they produce flowers in a few months.
Use them in your beds to fill gaps and bring a splash of colour to welcome the season. Or add a tier of interest to evergreen ground cover and sparkle to stark winter borders.
Plant crocus and grape hyacinths in bold drifts – clumps with gently curving outlines, beneath trees and shrubs, Allow them to self-sow, flourish and flower where they will.
Randomly scatter dwarf daffodils through your flowerbeds so they pop up between early-flowering perennials. But give showy bulbs such as crown imperials or fritillaries pride of place in a dedicated spot on their own.
Make bulbs the focus of bedding displays too. Use low-growers such as grape hyacinths or muscari to edge beds. Plant the frothy flowers of forget-me-nots to in-fill between the bare stems of tall-growing tulips.
By using a range of bulb varieties it is possible to have flowers for next to no effort all year round.
Magic
Plant a patch for cutting too, and you can bring the magic of the garden indoors to enjoy when the weather is not quite perfect for sitting outside.
The simplest thing to do is buy a
GOING WILD: Bold hyacinths bag of daffodil, tulip and hyacinth bulbs and fill up spaces in the veg plot once the main cropping season is over.
If you do not have a kitchen garden, there is always somewhere around now where you can make space for a small strip of flowers for cutting.
Grow them in wide rows, in rich soil in a sunny or partially shaded spot, and prepare the trench really well as if you were planting a hedge.
Use wide mesh plastic netting stretched horizontally for support. Get wooden markers for the rows to remind you what is planted where. To bring colour to the bare spot in the next few months, personalise the labels by painting and decorating them with your own design.
If you have some bulbs left over from your main planting schemes, tuck them into your winter-flowering patio pots. In spring you will enjoy the unexpected surprise when containers change virtually overnight as the bulbs burst into bloom.