Notes from my garden

Start thinking now about planting bulbs with advice from our gardening expert Alexandra Campbell.

YOU can plant daffodils, hyacinths and other bulbs any time from now onwards. But don’t plant tulips until October or November. Tulips don’t start putting out roots until then, and the later you plant them, the less likely they are to suffer from viral diseases.

However, daffodils, narcissi, hyacinths and other bulbs can be planted now. And even with tulips, it’s certainly worth buying or ordering your bulbs now if you haven’t already done so.

Garden centres will soon be full of Christmas goodies, and from now on, you may find that your favourite bulbs have sold out.

Probably the easiest way to guarantee a stunning bulb display is to plant your bulbs into plastic pots or “bulb baskets”, and then sink them into the ground where you want them once they’re flowering.

Bulb baskets look a bit like wide colanders, and are easier to sink into the ground than plastic pots.

They’re available cheaply from garden centres or online. But even simple plastic pots can be dropped into more attractive containers at flowering time.

I have decided that the “bulb lasagne” is a myth. Every year, some glossy magazine will come up with the news that you can have a glorious pot of bulbs flowering from February to April, by planting your bulbs in layers. You put tulips on the bottom layer, then daffodils, then there’s a layer of crocus . . .

I have never got a bulb lasagne to work. I have tried packing bulbs in tightly. Then the next year I gave them more room.

I’ve even been sent a “bulb lasagne” pack, with layers of bulbs already set out for me. The result? One tulip, a distorted hyacinth, and three manky-looking crocuses.

If you want a series of bulbs in pots from February to April, grow them separately in plastic bulb baskets or pots and drop them into your more beautiful planters when they are nearly flowering.

When they fade, take the plastic pot out and replace it with the next nearly flowering one. You could even plant a few extra in case of disappointments.

So why do we so often plant 15 bulbs in a border and only get nine up the following spring? Squirrels dig up bulbs (although they only eat some). If you’re planting into the ground, a piece of chicken wire over the area may prevent this. Heavy rain will rot bulbs, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

I think it’s also worth ordering bulbs from specialist bulb growers rather than dropping them into the weekly shop at the supermarket.

Supermarkets and garden centres do look after their stock well, but the bulbs will have come from the specialist nursery to start with, and you might as well cut out the extra journey and the time spent on the shelf.

However, you can also have some wonderful surprises in bulbs. Maybe you’ve cut back a shrub that’s encroached too far over the beds? The following year, some long-forgotten daffodil or tulip may just pop its head up.

And some bulbs really do naturalise well, spreading in borders and coming back year after year. I find that muscari are positively invasive, and orange “Ballerina” tulips have come up every year for 14 years in this garden.

Bulbs are such a joy – we should forgive their somewhat erratic flowering antics. n