Bulbs, bulbs, everywhere

At the end of the day, what needs to be written about bulbs? Every garden has some. Every gardener has their favorite. There's always some bulb which fails to perform as illustrated in the catalog or website. So why bother writing about them? It's been done to death. Every garden writer has extolled the virtues of bulbs.

For me, bulbs are the gateway drug. Not a huge investment in money or time, or even for that matter space in the garden... you get an enormous return. Most importantly, you see the payoff at the most crucial time of the year, during the grey/mud season of spring. Without bulbs, spring is spent waiting for trees to leaf out and for perennials to wake up. Bulbs give us that splendid wake up call, announcing "Spring can now begin!" For a little more than ten bucks you can get one heck of a thrill!

Years ago, we planted a few chionodoxa and scilla siberica in a long bed. They performed well. Life happened, and the bed became ignored. Health issues arose. The bed became a disaster, eventually being mowed back into lawn. The bulbs didnt give a shit. They kept coming up. Little tiny dark blue and blue & white flowers, dotting the lawn. If it snowed, they shrugged off the snow and kept right on proclaiming first dibs on blue! Eventually, as the lawn was reclaimed and turned back into garden beds, the scilla and chionodoxa started spreading. Both from bulblet and seed, they have gradually formed a thin stream of blue, ranging from where we planted them, all the way back to the compost pile. You can see where we've traveled with the wheelbarrow... clearly marked in blue. Hard to be upset by this little rivulet of bulbs.

 

Most gardeners love the super early blooms of galanthus (snowdrops). I goofed up when I first planted ours. I stuck them on the north side of our house, alongside a deck that we never used. Shade, dark and cold. They oftentimes wouldn't pop up until the daffodils had hit peak bloom. Ooops. 

The good news is that they dont mind being moved. So I moved them. And then I moved them again, and again. Every time I would think of a better place for them... and inevitably, some would be left behind. Bit by bit, they have spread throughout the yard... enough so that now I want a more creative display. A few years ago, we planted a big pot of snowdrops in a "temporary" bed that we were planning to hold over some peonies we needed to move. As things would turn out, that bed isn't quite as temporary as planned. This spring, in between bouts of snow, I lifted the galanthus and moved them to another spot. Why? Turned out that they were directly in the shadow of the solar panels. Ooops. You might see a trend here.

Now they are on the south side of the path that cuts through one of our newer beds. It gets oodles of sun and they will bloom close enough to the edge of the path that I will see them daily as I walk around, checking to see if the crocus have woken up.

 

So, what's the point in all of this? I guess to say that bulbs are a cheap way to bring bright color to springtime when color is so desperately needed. I am partial to the iris reticulata for their incredibly intense color and delicate form. I wish that the varieties we have planted were fertile. Knowing that they are sterile hybrids is kind of depressing since it means that we can't have fun creating new varieties from them. Oh well... we'll just have to wait for the Siberian irises and the iris tectorum to bloom to hybridize to our heart's content.