Nick Bailey has some sneaky moves with bulbs for a flower-filled spring garden
Lift and transplant some now for a flower-filled garden in the spring
We might all be laid out on the sofa watching the 17th rerun of The Great Escape but, of course, the garden hasn’t stopped. Underground, a hive of activity is taking place. Roots are extending, juvenile flowers are forming and nutrients are being absorbed as the root systems of our earliest-flowering plants stir into life. In fact, most of them have barely stopped, bar a brief break in summer. They might have been sat dormant while we were busy barbecuing, but by the time we’d foiled the bonfire night ta ies they’d been growing for weeks.
Cold triggers root growth in many of our spring-flowering bulbs. It tells them to get a shift on and put down some nutrient-guzzling roots as their window of spring glory is but a few months away. What this means for us in the garden is that we’re only days away from the first tentative shoots breaking the surface. Keep a close eye and you can take advantage of this moment to spread spring joy further around your garden. As those clusters of bulbs reveal themselves in beds, borders, rock gardens and pots, they’re at their most vigorous – charged with life after a hard winter graft in their subterranean search for nutrients. This is the moment to step in. At this point you can lift and transplant some, all or just a chunk of a cluster of bulbs and they’ll barely notice so long as you treat them like week-old ki ens! Well, maybe not that extreme but moving plants in this way calls for a particular technique that an old head gardener shared with me years ago. It’s really straightforward but it works if you want to move emerging clusters of bulbs such as narcissus, muscari, eranthis, Iris reticulata, crocus and species tulips.
Start by establishing where you want the lifted groups to go. Maybe a drift or try expanding the original clump or dot groups through an area. Then pre-dig the holes ready for the transplants. Next comes the tricky bit. Using a spade or trowel, depending on the size of the bulb, cut vertical slices into the soil around the bulbs to be moved. Then, in a single action, slide the spade or trowel into one of the four slices and tip it back, lifting bulbs, roots, soil and all in one clump.
Keep the clump on the spade or trowel to avoid the roots breaking and carry it to the new site. Then simply slot it into the hole. Get it right and the new transplant will barely know it has been moved. Finally, look forward to spring when your garden will be fuller than ever with beautiful bulbs.