Fill your Garden with Bulbs for a Colorful Spring!

Nothing says "Welcome, Spring" better than a yard bursting with masses of colorful bulbs in bloom!

 Late September through November is a great time to plant spring blooming bulbs in the garden.

Naturalize with Bulbs

Add drifts of early spring color to your gardens by naturalizing spring blooming bulbs. Many spring bulbs, such as Narcissus, Crocus, Leucojum, and Muscari, are especially well suited for naturalizing. They give the garden a "natural" look when planted en masse under trees and shrubs or even in the grass. They are especially beautiful when planted in great drifts in a woodland setting! Steep slopes, rock walls, and open meadows become a riot of early spring color with mass plantings of beautiful bulbs.

And remember - Narcissus are deer and vole resistant and they make great cut flowers! Watch Mark's video tip on cutting narcissus and see a video on the huge variety of different narcissus.

Use bulbs as a cluster in containers by the front door, peeking up from the rock garden, and as a border in front of your foundation shrubs. Watch a video tip on some other types of unusual spring blooming bulbs.

How to Naturalize

• Choose varieties that bloom very early, early, mid-season, late, and very late. This helps guarantee color in your gardens regardless of late freezes and other weather conditions.
• Plant bulbs in large groups of 5, 10, 25, or 50 of each variety.
• Plant naturalizing daffodils farther apart than normal since these types grow larger and fill in empty spaces. Suggested spacing is 8"-10" apart.  Watch Mark's video tip on spacing naturalizing daffodil bulbs.

Create a Formal Look . . .

For a formal look to your bulb plantings, use the more formal tulips and hyacinths in blocks of one or two colors. Keep in mind that, although tulips give you a great show of color, they are not long lived and generally need to be replaced each year. Be sure to select the largest bulb size possible so you get the biggest and most colorful blooms that first year. The Viettes are working on selecting and evaluating naturalizing tulips (ones that will come back year after year). We are hoping that these will be available in future years.

Striking Combinations and Inter-plantings

For a stunning informal spring landscape, combine spring bulbs with early blooming perennials such as creeping phlox (Phlox subulata), bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis), Pulmonaria, Epimedium, and Polemonium. For added height back these up with beautiful spring blooming shrubs like Pieris, Forsythia, flowering quince, or Viburnum carlesii.
Inter-plant your bulbs with daylilies, hosta, ornamental grasses, or other taller perennials which will hide the bulb foliage once they are finished blooming.  Remember to place your taller bulbs in the middle portion of your flower bed.

Plant Your Bulbs Correctly!

Good drainage is essential for bulbs. Work and amend the bulb bed by adding organic matter such as peat moss, compost or aged pink bark, and add Bulb-tone fertilizer.
Watch Mark's video tip on planting bulbs.

The basic rule-of-thumb for determining the proper planting depth and spacing is:

• 8" deep and 3" - 10" apart for large bulbs which are 2" or more in diameter.
• 5" deep and 1" - 2" apart for smaller bulbs which are 1" or smaller in diameter