CARPET OF BULBS THAT’S A REAL SUPER-SPREADER
MANY of the smaller spring bulbs lend themselves to being grown in carpets of thousands of bulbs. Luckily you can achieve this effect without spending a fortune. Bulbs are very specialised plants that spread happily when they find ground that is suitable to their needs. The effect sometimes happens naturally when small bulbs find ideal conditions and begin to self-sow freely. This happens with crocuses, scillas, chionadoxas and cyclamen.
But more often than not a carpet of bulbs will need a helping hand to speed up the process. This can be done the expensive way by purchasing sackfuls of bulbs in the autumn and painstakingly planting them over a large area. This can work very well, but can fail if the location lacks the right conditions.
The best way to create a bulb carpet is to try small clumps of bulbs in different places, trying to select the right conditions in each case. In a couple of years, it will be easy enough to see which places suit best, because the bulbs in the favourable areas will be thriving. The next stage is to lift and divide the bulb clumps every two or three years, just after flowering, establishing new clumps with the divisions of the old clumps.
This technique can build up large numbers of bulbs for little expense and not a huge amount of time or effort. The re-planting can be quick and easy by dropping small clumps of bulbs at the back of a spade. Drive the spade into the soil, push it forward and drop the bulbs in behind the spade. Step on
Drive the spade into the soil, push it forward and drop the bulbs in behind it
the soil lightly to firm it. Do not worry about depth of planting as bulbs find their own level in any case. With a bit of luck, the bulbs will begin shedding seeds and increasing by their own selfsowing. This happens usually where there is not much competition from grass or smothering by fallen leaves. If self-sowing gets going, the colony of bulbs will have become selfsustaining — all you have to do is to make sure the conditions are not changed significantly, by shading, drainage or trampling for instance.
Snowdrops are the best-known and the first of the small bulbs to flower. They are not picky about soil but they like it to be fertile and not dry out in summer or get waterlogged in winter. They grow well in the light shade of trees and shrubs but can be killed off if the shade is too heavy.
Crocus species vary quite a lot in their preferences. Crocus tommasinanus loves to grow in light shade with weak grass and often finds the conditions in such places conducive to prolific selfsowing. The ordinary large Dutch crocuses prefer an open sunny place with well-drained but fertile soil. The purple and white kinds are more robust than yellow sorts and are more likely to succeed.
Snowflakes (Leucojum) are like big snowdrops with a drooping bell-shaped flowers and green tips. They like quite wet ground, even slightly boggy.
Normally grown on rockeries, where they freely self-sow in the gravel surface, blue flowered scillas can also be grown in freedraining soil with little grass competition. The most commonly seen is Scilla siberica, and Scilla bifolia is excellent in large swathes, self-sowing freely when suited.
Glory-of-the-snow, Chionodoxa lucilliae, is similar to the scillas. More difficult to get going but it sometimes does well under the light shade of deciduous shrubs and trees. It does well in sandy and gravelled areas.
The spring flowering Greek anemone, Anemone blanda, has a tuber rather than a bulb but it behaves like any bulbous flower. It produces daisy-like flowers in blue, white or occasionally pink.
A strong and tenacious plant, it copes well with mown grass. It does very well in light shade but flowers better in sunshine. The wood anemone, Anemone nemorosa, is a real star in shady areas, carpeting the ground and flowering well.
The small Cyclamen coum has a rounded tuber and small purple flowers. Best planted in light shade with weak grass, it self-sows in suitable conditions and likes welldrained humusy ground. It is often planted near the base of large tree where the pretty leaves enjoy some summer shade.