Gardening David Wheeler
DAVID WHEELER
THE BEAUTY OF BULBS
If Mother Nature was in a generous mood when she scooped out Lulworth Cove, she excelled herself in the creation of flowering bulbs. Apart from their size, staggering botanical diversity, provenance and rousing histories, these underground ‘storage units’ provide vital year-round shots of exotic colour to stimulate the most sluggish of gardeners.
Indeed, you don’t even need a garden to share in their cornucopia of abundant gifts. Nor do you need great horticultural skills or deep pockets (except for collectors’ rarities), and the choices available – from A to Z, from stately alliums to crocus-like zephyranthes – are seemingly boundless.
With change out of a tenner, it’s possible to enjoy a several-months-long display of sometimes fragrant flowers, coloured chalkiest white to near coal black. From a windowbox to a redundant soup tureen or cast-off washing-up bowl (nicely camouflaging a plastic one, of course), the joy begins by adding earthy-smelling, damp compost, preferably over a bed of pebbles or grit to help prevent waterlogging if the chosen receptacle has no drainage holes.
Shopping for bulbs is just as exciting as planting them. Only a few of each kind are required (multi-packs can be shared with friends or eked out over a second or third arrangement). You could start, perhaps, with half a dozen Januaryflowering snowdrops, some early-season crocuses, mid- and late-season small daffs, muscari (grape hyacinths), scillas, later-blooming fritillaries and a scattering of dwarf tulips. The range is endless and they’re in shops and garden centres now.
Most bulbs are unfussy about soil type, lasting longer in flower out of direct sunlight. So carefree are some potted bulbs, I was once told, that they used to be grown in small containers under water – by submariners putting out from Her Majesty’s Naval Base at Faslane.
I’m lucky enough, on England’s border with Wales, to have broad acres in which to indulge a passion for bulbs of all sizes, in all seasons. But no few months up to and past Easter seem properly dressed indoors without a few bowls full of the easy growers.
How small can you go? A single crocus in an eggcup? Half a dozen Iris reticulata in a coffee mug? A handful of diminutive hoop-petticoat daffodils ( Narcissus bulbocodium) in a biscuit tin? Some four- to six-inch-high Tulipa urumiensis in a disused tea caddy? (The last of these profit from a sunny aspect, where their bright, bronze-tinged yellow flowers open flat to reveal a bunch of stamens.)
Growing bulbs in easily portable containers has many benefits. At peak flowering time, they make a lively contribution to a formal dinner table; they can cheer up bedridden chums; and they can even be swapped for a few days with fellow enthusiasts cultivating a different selection. Supremely, they make wonderful Christmas gifts, planted now and ideally presented unlabelled on the Big Day to keep the recipient guessing what’s to come.
Free now from a life spent under my grandparents’ bed, a Victorian potty – into which I had holes carefully drilled – allows deeper compost. A few years ago, it housed 50 or more tightly packed bluebells (afterwards transplanted to the garden). On another occasion, it harboured a similar number of light and dark maroon, chequered (‘tessellated’ is the botanical term) snake’s-head fritillaries – Fritillaria meleagris – leavened with a few milky-white, albino forms. This year, it’s stuffed with primrose-yellow Iris danfordiae, little fellas of the reticulate clan whose sweet and delicate perfume cannot, thankfully, be likened to the intended content of this elaborately decorated example of the