Last Call to Order Bulbs
 John Scheepers and Old House Gardens Photos
|
(9/9/2008) There is still time, if you act now, to order bulbs for an exuberant spring display. Some bulb houses are enabling last-minute sales with vastly improved Web sites: As I finalized and placed my orders 10 days ago, their computers checked against inventory before registering an item. I’m an optimist and hope this will assure everything arrives as promised.
People look askance when I say many varieties of daffodils have disappeared from my garden over the years — and in some cases not all that many years. Daffodils are, after all, deer and rodent-resistant. They have a reputation for lasting forever.
Mind you, the ones I’ve lost were carefully selected for color, a delectable turn of petal, or fragrance after falling for a soft-porn photograph and description in a catalog or seeing them in European gardens or the Chelsea Flower Show. The daffodils that return year after year are from my first order 26 years ago for a mixed collection that cost $36 a bushel.
Two bulb gurus, Brent and Becky Heath (brentandbeckysbulbs.com), write that if you give them full sun (or at least six hours even after the leaves are on the trees), water, and proper nutrition, daffodils should last for years.
Now, I try to read in between the lines of catalog descriptions; what is not said can be more important than any of the hyperbole. I look for phrases like “terrific perennializer and an old standby” and “reliable for the garden.” “Show flower,” “blue-ribbon winner” (that means in competitive flower shows), or “aristocratic” may make it into my dreams, but not onto my order list.
|
 My favorite glory of snow, Chionodoxa sardensis.
|
For the first time I’ve placed an order with Old House Gardens (oldhousegardens.com), which specializes in heirloom bulbs. Have I fallen for garden porn with a unique angle?
I love the little stories attached to each item, like the politically incorrect name of the world’s darkest purple crocus with a center of gold stamens and a narrow edge of silver from 1910 that was “all but lost,” but rediscovered in a collection in Latvia. Have you ever heard of a white form of the rodent-resistant Crocus tommasinianus? Who could resist?
A wholesale catalog new to me, Colorblends (colorblends.com), is very tempting. Where have I been? They say they’ve been at it for 21 years. They take the uncertainty out of combining bulbs: Are the colors compatible, the heights and flowering times the same? Colorblends offers dozens of different combinations for tulips alone.
John Scheepers (johnscheepers.com) has been reliable and helpful for years, which means I tend to take it for granted. They have a wholesale arm, Van Engelen, if you require large quantities.
A friend told me of a bulb with deep-blue flowers that blooms in late May and June, Ixiolirion pallasii. He had learned about it last year and it seems to be a winner. Eureka, it is listed by Scheepers with the additional information that it wants hot, almost arid conditions in summer, perfect for the spot I had in mind.
Don’t stop with only the big three of bulbs, daffodils, tulips, and crocuses. The “minor” bulbs are endlessly fascinating and can provide your garden with flowers from warm spells in December and January (snowdrops) through at least June (alliums).
Merlin, fragrant, long-lasting, and sunproof. |
Squills should be at the top of every list. Elizabeth Lawrence in her classic “The Little Bulbs” wrote, “The delightful thing about squills is that they are so blue, and the most intense blues of all are found in the flowers of Scilla sibirica and S. bifolia, those two tiny ones that bloom so early in the year. . . .”
S. sibirica Spring Beauty, my favorite, is the earliest of the scilla to flower, as early as Jan. 20 in Miss Lawrence’s garden in Charlotte, N.C., and in early February in Ohio garden of her friend Karl Krippendorf.
Throw restraint out the window when you order scilla; order them by the hundreds, even though they naturalize easily. If you have not seen the blue carpet on the front lawn of L.V.I.S., make a note to look next March and you will want one, too.
Jerry White in Springs has underplanted his Cornus mas with its early yellow flowers with scilla. They would be equally handsome with any of the other early flowering shrubs with yellow blooms, like Mahonia Arthur Menzies, late-flowering witch hazels, winter hazels, or, heaven help me, forsythia.
The late-flowering, robust summer snowflake, Leucojum aestivum Gravetye Giant, is one of Jack Lenor Larsen’s favorite bulbs and it is planted liberally at LongHouse. Another rodent-resistant bulb, it grows to about a foot tall and in May has clusters of showy, pendant, bell-shaped white flowers tipped with green.
My project this fall is to replace the daffodils that disappeared from the side of the driveway. The centerpiece will be Delibes, rich-buttercup-yellow petals with a cup edged in bright orange and a pale-yellow interior. Friends and I fell in love with it on opening day at LongHouse. I envision sweeping rivulets running parallel to the drive, with the bicolor flowers alternating with all-yellow blossoms.
Not surprisingly, Jack Lenor Larsen is planning a more dramatic feast for us next spring. For the last few years he has been dreaming of a garden filled with clumps of white daffodils and summer snowflakes. White daffodils tend to flower later than the yellow ones, extending the season and enabling people who don’t return until May to enjoy them.
 Abby Jane Brody
|
More specifically, he has been attracted to the poet’s narcissi (N. Actaea and Pheasant’s Eye) and an expanding number of their hybrids. Brent Heath will conduct a workshop and tour of the new white daffodil garden; more information will be available next spring.
If you are not familiar with the minor bulbs, some of the best of the classic garden literature features them. After sending off this year’s bulb orders, send away for books to read this winter.
I always check first with Louise Beebe Wilder when I want an informed opinion about a plant and how it ought to do in my garden. She gardened in Bronxville, N.Y., and although she died in 1938 the fact that her books, including “Adventures With Hardy Bulbs,” are still being reprinted and are readily available is testament to her powers of observation in the garden.
“My Garden in Spring” and “Crocus and Colchicum” by E.A. Bowles remain standard references, as well as enjoyable reading. Gus Bowles is one of my horticultural heroes; when I began planting my garden for year-round interest, I would draw up lists of his favorites and then search them out.
“A Flower for Every Day” by Margery Fish is another guide to selecting and using bulbs, as well as all the other plants that flourished in her cottage garden. Mrs. Fish was a prolific garden writer who began gardening in her 50s, I believe, after her husband retired as a newspaper editor and they purchased East Lambrook Manor in Somerset, England.
Her books are based on her own gardening experiences, and have been inspirational to generations of gardeners. Read her books, if you haven’t, and visit East Lambrook Manor, as soon as you can.