Spring Flowering Bulbs

I cannot believe how quickly this year has gone by! The Japanese Anemones in the garden are beginning to flower and chutney is being made on the stove as the courgettes and runner beans are harvested in huge quantities!

It is time to start thinking once again about spring flowering bulbs and my local Notcutts have already taken some of their deliveries with plenty more to follow.

We have been busy cutting back the huge amounts of growth on shrubs in the back garden and there are lots of gaps in the borders where some new Daffodils can be planted. Like many gardeners, we put in several different varieties when the garden was initially planted up and some have been crowded out by shrubs growing large and shading them completely. After a while, although the bulbs were planted deeply, they have stopped flowering and some have died out. Now that the back garden is less shaded, with the Privet hedge under control at last, we can try again with some of the more unusual ones!

I love to see early Daffodils poking through the soil before Christmas – a reminder that spring is not far away, and the bright yellow trumpets of ‘Rinjveld’s Early Sensation’ are always included in the arrangement on the table for Christmas Day. I would not be without this variety but I am also very fond of the late flowering poeticus types which flower in May. Their pure white, rounded petals are set off by the small, deep red centres (‘Pheasant Eye’ is a good common name) and they have a delicious sweet scent. Some of these would be a good idea for the cutting garden as they are stunning in a vase with twigs of Hazel catkins.

We have a definite gap in the Narcissus flowering season from the beginning of February until the mainstream Daffodils begin in March, so this needs to be addressed as well. Many of the early flowered varieties are multi headed, often in orange and yellow with a strong, sweet scent similar to the ‘Sols’ that are grown in Cornwall and the Scilly Isles as cut flowers. Some of these varieties are more prone to frost damage, so we will need to site them in sun and a sheltered position away from any cold winter winds.

As I have often written before, our back garden is too shady and damp to keep Tulips from year to year and many other gardeners seem to have the same problem. But I must have Tulips in the garden; they link spring into summer so cleverly with their bold leaves and green buds that sit in suspended animation for weeks before opening flat in warm sunshine, to reveal their exotic markings. I treat them as bedding plants and replant each November, choosing different varieties each year, knowing they will be a fleeting pleasure but giving me more pleasure choosing different colours and flower forms for the following year!

Last year I planted some in pots and they were a great success. In previous years, the mice had eaten the bulbs through the winter, but our cat, Oscar is a great hunter a spring show of Tulips in pots is one of the benefits of this!