Don’t Be Bulb Light

Tulips and Muscari

Here's an idea: Plant 'em this fall to add color to your life come springtime.

September 2006

By Don Engebretson

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Try planting ten to twelve tulips a foot or two back from the street at the start of the driveway—then multiple similar plantings farther back and over there, then a spot of thirty or forty in a different area as you move closer to the house, with a final splash of eighty or more bulbs right up near the house. Now you'll get the dazzling type of floral effect that makes traffic slow down, particularly if the plantings are placed such that the eye zigzags up through your yard as it follows the color swatches from the street to midyard to the house. It's the old water analogy: a meandering stream widening into rapids culminating in a roaring waterfall.

Now that you’re all in a lather and ready to race out to plant tulips, be advised that you should hold off until the first week of October. Remember, bulbs may have developed over the centuries into genetic wonders, but they're still dumb as posts—tulips being the dumbest. Plant tulips in the warm soil of early September, water them, and should we get a sunny and mild October, they'll not only establish roots, they'll proceed straight ahead into Plan A, which is to bloom, and will pop their tips up out of the ground just about the same time you're putting fresh spark plugs in the snow blower.

Daffodils seem to have developed a better grasp of the concept and wait for spring to grow and bloom, so they can safely be planted in mid-September. Follow pretty much the same design considerations and planting procedure for daffodils as described for tulips above.

The Other Bulbs
Are tulips and daffodils the only bulbs to plant this fall?

Certainly not! Planting nothing but tulips and daffodils for spring color is like relying on just two herbaceous perennials to create an interesting midsummer flower bed. Try planting some of the other, lesser-known bulbs in your garden this fall, and you'll be amazed by the variety of sizes, colors, forms, and scents unveiled next spring. Here are some extremely hardy, fabulous bulb plants that you'll find in the garden centers right now—all can be planted now through mid-October: Crocus—OK, no big surprise here, plenty of gardeners grow crocuses, but, for those new to gardening, these are among the earliest to bloom—many varieties often push their blooms up through the early April remnants of snow.

Muscari—The very first exotic bulb I grew after completing the mandatory five years of tulip and daffodil planting. Small bubbles of pure white flowers cover the top half of the grasslike stalks and leaves in a cannonball pattern. Only six to ten inches tall, they hold their bloom up to three weeks.

Fritillaria—Here’s a most dazzling plant, which I’ve found tolerates damp spots—a scenario that usually spells death-by-rot for bulbs. The flowers hang downward ("pendant") in a huge assortment of colors.

Eranthis—A short, early yellow bloomer that works well in combination with crocus. Actually prefers partial shade, a rarity for spring-blooming bulbs.

Allium—Onion, for short. June to July bloomers in the one- to four-foot range. I grow A. giganteum, which produces perfect, four-inch spheres with blue-gray leaves and pink-purple flowers atop forty-inch stems and is praised by my neighbors.

Don Engebretson can be e-mailed from his website, renegadegardener.com.

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