Carol’s guide to bulbs
Plan your best-ever bulb show now – there’s no easier way to perfect blooms, says Carol Klein
Planting bulbs is a magical gardening task. At a time of year when many plants are dying down, there is huge joy in putting dry bulbs into the ground and containers, knowing the transformation they will bring come spring. But we are often so intent on wringing out the last drop of enjoyment from our plots that bulbplanting sometimes takes a back seat. By the time we come to fishing out the brown paper bags packed with potential treasure, expediency can take over from imagination. But it is worth taking the time to plan, because bulbs are the key to a spectacular spring garden. Take away swathes of snowdrops and crocuses beneath trees, followed by sparkling blue scillas, narcissus, vibrant tulips in every shade and spring would be a dull season. Bulbs are the plants that turn the early months of the year into a celebration. Bulbs are easy to grow and care for, and are surely among the most rewarding plants we can nurture. With artfulness and imagination, they can be woven into the fabric of beds and borders. Far from blinding the onlooker to everything else with their ‘look at me’ factor, they can be subtly blended with existing plants or repeated through a border in waves, introducing rhythms to a planting scheme. At Glebe Cottage, we try to use our bulbs so that they fit in to the overall aesthetic rather than stand out. Limit the varieties for maximum impact – it’s better to stick to a few varieties of tulips and plant more of each variety.
Infinite choice
There is a huge range of bulbs to choose from. It’s worth exploring beyond the fami liar stalwarts to discover the more unusual bulbs, corms, tubers and rhizomes on offer from tiny chionodoxa to giant camassias in glimmering blue, from Puschkinia libanotica, which arrives as the snowdrops fade, its blue starry f lowers a perfect match for yellow hel lebores, to the elegant Nectaroscordum siculum with
The term ‘bulb’ covers a range of bulbous plants, including corms, tubers and rhizomes
its pendulous bell-shaped flowers. Choose the right varieties for your garden and you’ll be rewarded with a dazzling display. It doesn’t matter what size garden you have either – from a pot on a balcony or a small border to vast lawn and shady woodland, there are bulbs to suit every space. This is the time of year when we begin to peruse plant catalogues full of tempting images of tulips, daffodils and crocuses. But crocus, for example, aren’t really bulbs – they’re corms. The term ‘bulb’ covers a range of bulbous plants, including corms, tubers and rhizomes. Plants like crocus and gladioli are grown from corms; dahlias from tubers and some iris from rhizomes, but they all get lumped together as ‘bulbs’. They are all underground storage organs. Tulips, daffodils and hyacinths are true bulbs. Bulbs are made up from the leaves and flowers they’ll eventually produce; the fact these are already inside, raring to go, is part of what makes bulbs so easy to grow. One of the main purposes of bulbs and corms is to store the starch and protein that is needed to support growth when conditions are right. The same is true of tubers and rhizomes. Having a ready supply of food, helps these plants grow in a range of conditions. At first sight corms look like bulbs. In fact, they’re solid and do not have layers inside, like a true bulb. New stems emerge from the top of the corm usually turning themselves into a flower though they can also produce underground stems that go on to make new corms. The potato is a good example of a tuber, in common with dahlias and cyclamen. It develops its tuber from stems and, from this, roots go out to gather nutrients and water and shoots radiate to form flowers and leaves. Rhizomes are simi lar, but in them underground stems swell up producing roots on their undersides and shoots from the top. Ginger is a good example, with edible rhizomes, as are bearded irises. These rhizomes should be planted at the soil surface, so the sun can warm the top of the rhizome to help it produce more flowers the following year.
The evolution solution
Whichever category they belong to – bulbs, tubers, corms or rhizomes – they are all wonderful examples of how organisms have evolved to cope with speci f ic conditions, so learning which they are helps us to grow them better. Unless you’re growing straight rows of gladioli for cut f lowers in the veg garden,
the general rule for most bulbs is try to plant in a naturalistic, informal way. Some bulbs though lend themselves to container culture. At Glebe Cottage, we buy tulips every year for pot displays. Tulips are perfect subjects for pots and if your soil is heavy clay like ours it is sometimes the only option. Acidanthera or as they’re now called Gladiolus murielae are a good pick for pots. They f lower late and are often at their best in September and October. With a bit of warmth in the atmosphere they exude a glorious scent in the evening. In other parts of the garden, snowdrops, narcissi, camassias, erythroniums, and trilliums are left to their own devices. When bulbs are happy they will increase and their effect can be maximised by making the most of their colonising habits, simply digging them up and spreading them out. This is done either during their dormant season or in the case of snowdrops and some others, by splitting them and replanting soon after f lowering, as their foliage fizzles.
Late-summer sizzlers
Although spring bulbs are on our minds in autumn, it’s easy to forget that there is a whole range of bulbs that carry the season on right through early summer to autumn. These deserve to have their importance recognised as they provide high points of colour and pizazz and they are often at their best when the garden is looking a bit seedy and overblown. The flowers of South Africa (such as crocosmia) or Mexico (such as dahlias) are more vividly coloured than our own native wild f lowers and it is for that reason that we want to use these plants. Many summer-flowering bulbs will introduce dramatic splashes of colour that wake up the summer and early autumn scene. To have them in flower in your garden this time next year, you will need to plant them in the spring. Without bulbs our gardens would be poorer places, with them we can be assured of a colourful show often at a time when little else is stirring.
There is a whole range of bulbs that carry the season on through early summer to autumn