Dressed in white
Garden Club of Houston creates commemorative collection celebrating the bulb mart’s 75th anniversary
Spring-blooming bulbs are like buried treasure.
Each fall, gardeners put prized daffodil, crocus, snowflake and ranunculus bulbs in the ground and await the beauty that will emerge. Some varieties will naturalize in the Houston garden.
Other bulbs, including tulips and Dutch hyacinth, demand a bit more care. They need a six- to eightweek stint in the refrigerator to simulate winter before they can be planted.
Regardless of which bulbs you want to plant, the Garden Club of Houston’s Bulb and Plant Mart is the place to get them. The sale, Thursday through Oct. 14 at St. John the Divine Episcopal Church, offers timetested varieties that work in Houston-area gardens. This year, the bulb mart celebrates its 75th year; the first sale took place on the steps of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where the club created and cared for the gardens.
To commemorate the anniversary, the club has created a special all-white bulb garden collection, member and volunteer Jennifer Dolman said. Club president Adele Benson and bulb mart chair Margaret Rotan chose early to midseason bulbs,
including ‘Jeanne d’Arc’ crocus, ‘Mount Hood’ daffodil, white Leucojum and white ‘Album’ muscari.
“We like to create examples of what you might do for the perfect container garden,” Dolman said.
Rotan has had her hands full preparing for the show — and dealing with house flooding after Hurricane Harvey, Dolman said. Rotan made a point to rescue her hard drive with all the plans for the mart.
“She remembered how, after Ike, people came to the mart to restore their gardens,” Dolman said.
We will again need that burst of happiness that our spring gardens can bring.
The mart will stock more than 500,000 bulbs from domestic and international suppliers. Look for amaryllis, iris, daffodils and hyacinths as well as small bulb favorites, anemone, crocus, freesia and ranunculus. Offerings from the gardens of club members include crinums, daylilies and gingers, grown specifically for the mart.
The mart isn’t just about bulbs. Heidi Sheesley with Treesearch Farms will focus on Gulf Coast habitat plants in a presentation on Friday. She’ll include creeping yellow Turnera, Rosa’s Blush dwarf blueberry, Calico pipevine, dwarf Fairy Duster and Heartleaf hibiscus.
Nancy Thomas, the club’s award-winning horticultural member and past president of the Garden Club of America, will be on hand Oct. 14 at a booth dedicated to “plants that merit attention.”
“She has been very involved in conservation, and she sets a great example,” Dolman said.
Funds from the sale go to garden and conservation projects around Houston, including many that suffered damage from Harvey, such as Bayou Bend, Rienzi and Buffalo Bayou Park.
If you have questions about bulbs, ask the volunteers manning the booths, Dolman said. “They are active gardeners with expertise, and you can learn a lot from them.”
On Oct. 14, the mart will have a family-friendly atmosphere with a pop-up farmers market, food trucks and activities for young gardeners. The club’s Junior Gardeners will host a tent to teach kids how to make seed balls of native prairie grasses; they can make one to take home and one to plant along White Oak Bayou.
Bulb tips
Select firm bulbs. Store those that require refrigeration in mesh bags on a shelf, not in a bin or drawer. Ethylene gas emitted by certain fruits and vegetables can destroy the bulbs.
Store other bulbs in a cool, dry area in mesh bags or open flats until you are ready to plant.