A Sound Investment
By Thamasin March
Spring bulbs are an investment and, pound for pound, there is none better.
They bring hope that winter will end, and joy and smiles from then on in. Regard them as an insurance against therapy bills: a pale yellow daffodil defiantly withstanding a cold, grey March day can lift the heart and chase away the blues.
There are literally hundreds of different types and varieties to chose from. The key is to reduce your selection to a few varieties, and buy as many as your purse can bear. Over the years I have boiled it down to a basic list of bulbs that work reliably, and more than return their initial investment in our local conditions.
I concentrate primarily on the small early bulbs for January, February &and March, bulking them up every year. Snowdrops, Winter Aconites planted both around shrubs and between tree roots; crocus in the lawn or front of borders in clumps; miscari and dwarf Iris as near to the house as you can get them, or in window boxes; miniature daffodils and species tulips around deciduous shrubs, so they can do their thing before the shrubs get going. If the right ones are chosen initially, they will multiply, naturalising themselves .
 By the end-March/beginning-April you’re into daffodil territory. I favour the old types (think Farrow & Ball, not Woolworth’s), planted in large clumps in between shrubs or in the lawn. The rest of the garden is beginning to wake up, and it’s show time; the tulips, big bright and brassy like can-can dancers, or shy delicate and intriguing, as ballerinas. The choice is yours. Think of tulips as a way of ringing the changes, think bold, think ‘Oh, so this year’s colour’ and play. Check the flowering times on the packet, so that interesting combinations can be made. It is possible to have tulips on the go from March to the end of May. One tip: plant bright, pale tulips in the distance, leaving the rich black, maroons and parrot ones for closer display. I end the spring bulb fest with Alliums at the end of June. By then the rest of the garden is demanding attention, and we are off again into another summer.
When choosing bulbs, go for the largest and firmest; shrivelled, soft bulbs will rarely flower. Plant them as soon as you can. Most bulbs need to be planted in September, early-October. One can just get away with planting tulips into November. Buy your bulbs from a reputable source, with a high turnover. Market stalls look good but I have had bad experiences, buying what I thought was a black tulip to discover six months later that it was a sickly pink. Plant as instructed on the packet. As rule of thumb plant four times deeper than the size of the bulb in a wide hole.
Design wisdom says: plant odd numbers and don’t put them in straight military rows. The way of getting a naturalistic clump is to spill small bulbs gently out of the packet from a reasonable height, or with large bulbs throw handfuls up into the air, and plant where they land.
The list below is one I designed for a client last year. We planted 1500 bulbs one sunny day late in September, mostly crawling along on our professional horticulturalists’ bottoms. The client didn’t want to know where or what we planted. I received phone calls throughout spring, which consisted of squeals of delight and ‘Oh, there are little yellow ones under the tree!’ By the time we got to the black multi-flowered Tulip ‘Havrun’, she was in ecstasy.
Late January/February, Glanthus Nivalis ‘Flore Pleno’ (snowdrops)
February, Eranthis hyemalis (Winter Aconites)
February/March, Iris reticulata (dwarf iris)
February/ March, Crocus tommasinianus ‘Ruby Giant’
February/March, Narcissus ‘February Gold’ (dwarf daffodils)
March, Miscari latifolium (blue grape hyacinths)
March/April, Tulipa tarda (small, yellow and white early flowering species)
Early April, Narcissus ovallaris (The perfect pale yellow daffodil)
April, Tulipa ‘Purissima’ (creamy white classic tulip)
May, Narcissus poeticus recurvus (poetical combination of white flower with orange centre and divine
scent)
May, Tulipa ‘Havrun’ (an unusual maroon-black multi flowered tulip almost obscene in its beauty)
June, Alliums ‘Purple sensation’ a reliable mauve ball.
I have deliberately left out hyacinths, I love them in pots along with paper white narcissus for Christmas, but to me they look like loo-brushes stuck in a flowerbed. That’s the joy of gardening: we all have opinions.
Thamasin runs The Pleasure Gardens, a design company whose aim is to put the pleasure back into gardens.
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