Getting ahead of the bulb planting season is something to watch before you start planting your bulbs that are everywhere in the shops, garden centers, and even DIY stores. They’ll be the first thing when you go on a gardening website because that’s what everybody’s buying now. This information is suitable for any style of garden as you can use it to suit your own gardening taste whether it be a medium-sized traditional Cottage Garden like mine or a small City Courtyard or even a balcony. And if you want to know more about jobs other than gardening jobs, click below.
There’s a wide range of bulbs out there that you can buy for spring flowering and they range from very early flowering snowdrops through grape hyacinths, crocuses, right through to the Tulips and then the alliums which start to take us into the summer. There is an order to how the bulbs flower so generally you’ll have your crocuses and your snowdrops come first and then you’ll get your daffodils then your tulips. Tulips depending on the variety can range quite widely in when they flower and then you have your alliums which will lead you into your summer flowering borders. Tip number one: check when your bulb flowers because it’s really hard to plan how your Garden’s going to look if you don’t know when your particular bulb is going to flower.
You will find the earlier flowering bulbs tend to be shorter in height so things like your grape hyacinths, your snowdrops, your crocuses, your bluebells will all be smaller so you can think about that when you’re starting your planting and then as you move into the Tulips they get taller so you can think about that with your next stage moving closer towards Summer and those billowing borders. Then you have your alliums which are even taller although you do get different varieties of shorter and taller tulips and alliums but generally speaking look at when they flower so you can start building up those borders for summer.
Tip number two: check the height. The earlier flowering bulbs tend to be quite short and that’s probably due to the cold, the low levels of light. They just don’t become those billowing summer flowers that you get in the middle of the summer or those alliums as they head towards Summer. Just think about that as well as you’re planning your borders, all your pots and arrangements however you want to grow them. Think about the height so you’re looking at when they flower and the height.
Tip number three: think about the color palette. Whether you’re informal or formal then just giving a little bit of extra thought to complimentary colors could mean the difference between a garden that is full of clashing flowers and looks a bit of a mess to a beautifully cohesive planting scheme despite the mass and chaos of flowers. Of course if you’re planting lots of tulips and alliums and daffodils there’s going to be a mass of flowers. Clashing colors can be beautiful and I will follow up on that in the next tip but sometimes giving a bit of thought to a color scheme can create a more restful elegant looking scheme.
Tip number four is if you have just bought all those different clashing colors and everything you think oh why did I do that because you’re an impulse buyer like me then don’t despair. What you can do is and what I like to do especially with new bulbs for a variety of reasons is start them off in pots. Now the reason for that is one you can arrange them to suit you so in the spring you may not have a full Garden yet.
You may have just moved in or you’ve only just started to put your mind onto the garden and in the winter you’re really only looking out the window. What you want to do is you want to have your pots arranged, your tulips, your bulbs, your daffodils arranged where you can see them from the house out the window just to give you the impression that the garden is full and that spring is on its way.
If you have a balcony or a small courtyard Garden the same you just want to be able to look out the window on a rainy day and see those signs of spring or when you’re washing the dishes you want to see those pots full of spring flowers. That’s why I say plant them in pots and color block them. If you’ve bought clashing colors they can really work especially when you color block so you do all the orange in one tub, all the yellow in another and all the purples in another etc and repeat and then put them all together in a plant arrangement in pots where they’re really going to make a dramatic impression.
That’s how I would deal with clashing colors going forward so don’t despair if you’ve had clashing colors just plant them in pots and also then you can use the pots to fill in gaps in your borders. Especially with later flowering tulips you may have other things now filling up your borders and putting on leaves and some of the late flowering tulips and the alliums can then be moved into the borders to fill those borders and create maybe some height or bring some color to the front of a border so pots are a really good way for planting bulbs.
A final reason I do plant in pots is because I am concerned about some of the pesticides and chemicals that are used on the especially the Dutch cultivated bulbs and therefore I want to contain any of that poison in pots for a good one to two years before those plants go out into my soil. Mine’s an organic garden and I don’t want it contaminated.
Tip number five is how you arrange your bulbs when you’re planting them. Earlier in the year I went to a National Trust historic property called Smallhythe Place and they had it was just approaching May I think or it may have even been early May. They had all the alliums flowering in this Cottage Garden that they had, a professional Cottage Garden. It was absolutely beautiful. What really struck me particularly about the garden was the way that they had arranged their alliums. It was absolutely stunningly beautiful what they did and it made a much better cleaner impact than just having them across the Garden in a chaotic manner. It will help you plan your borders for next year because now we’re thinking about our borders for next year.
Back to the alliums the way they planted them. They planted them in groups and they came up through the borders like chandeliers. They also planted white ones and they came right up through the borders because if you remember borders earlier on in the year are going to be shorter generally than borders in late summer where everything gets much more blousy and fills out much more. The alliums came up and it reminded me of upside down chandeliers poking out coming out and they provided that stately structure to the borders.
It’s very difficult obviously especially if you’re doing a Cottage Garden to make it look cohesive. It can be quite chaotic but when you have these structures in between that the eye can make sense of then the whole garden suddenly makes sense. They had these clumps. They planted the bulbs obviously maybe in a circle tightly together and then the heads of the alliums just came up in this circular Clump above the borders. It looked really striking. The other thing they also did was they used the alliums which they planted in a line alongside of a barn. Their barn was beautiful anyway so it didn’t exactly need tarting up but I was thinking if you have a domestic Garden you have a shed or a garage and you’re trying to have a more natural feel in your garden then this was a really good effect.
It’s also great if you’re going to have a wedding on a plot of land or something like that. They basically planted these white alliums up against a dark barn which was painted dark and so when the alliums grew up against the side of the barn it looked like bunting along the side of the barn. It was absolutely beautiful the way these allium heads bobbed along against this dark background. If you are going to do that you’re going to need to think about the color of the background versus whatever you’re planting in front of it to create that effect and that’s the same when you’re planting in the borders.
Think about the color of the background that you’re planting your bulbs against. Planting white alliums against a white fence or a White House is just not going to have such a beautiful effect. You might want to turn to the blue or purple alliums for that. Think about your background as well so that was tip number six. Think about your background when you’re planting those colors. There are just a few tips that I’ve learned as I’ve gone along planting bulbs over the years so hopefully that will help you.