Heavenly hyacinths
With beautiful flowers and stunning fragrance, hyacinths are a favourite for most gardeners – but they need to be properly looked after for best results
look great in the house and possess one of the strongest scents going. In shades of pink, blue, yellow and white they can be fitted into any colour scheme and the bulbs, once planted, are seldom likely to disappoint.
Well, that’s the theory. But all too often, the flowers fail to rise above the bulb, or else they rise up too quickly – like something out of Jack and the Beanstalk – and quickly topple over.
Then a thing of beauty they are not. So what is the secret with hyacinths? How can you get them to flower properly and uniformly without careering all over the place or being shy of coming up at all? Let’s go back to the beginning. If you are growing your own bowlfuls of hyacinths, make sure they are all the same colour because different varieties flower at slightly different times. Better still, plant the bulbs in single three-inch flowerpots and group them together in a larger bowl as they are coming up to flower – that way you can pick those that are at the same stage of development. After potting up in autumn (and you need not use bulb fibre – ordinary multipurpose compost will do) the bulbs need to be put in a cool, dark place for about eight weeks. The airing CUPHYACINTHS
board or the cupboard under the stairs are likely to be too warm – but a well-insulated loft is fine, or a shed or a garage.
You should only bring the bulbs indoors and into the light when you can see that the flower has risen up from the centre of the bulb and that there is a clear “waist” beneath it and a touch of colour to the buds. And this is the critical bit: when you’ve brought them indoors, the bulbs need really good light but not too much heat.
It’s excessive heat and a lack of bright light that will cause them to spiral heavenwards and topple
over. Keep the compost gently moist and stand the bulbs on a windowsill for most of the day so they are cool but brightly lit.
There is a little trick you can perform – push a piece of stout wire through the top of the flower spike and right down into the bulb, so that the stem will be invisibly supported and won’t be able to do a swallow dive.
All right, the bulb won’t enjoy it too much, but most hyacinths are discarded after flowering since having a garden full of weedy variants is not much fun. Hardhearted? A bit. But then sometimes you have to be as a gardener.
Only bring them into light when you can see flower has risen up