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Bulbs 101 - customized for northern zones - Sign Up Now!

© Mary Henry

In most classes, you have to sign up, attend, take notes and go home and study for the tests. This class is different. Since this is the internet, you can read on at your leisure, check back later to refresh your memory, email the instructor for clarifications and there are no tests! - only the joyful and hopeful task of planning for and planting bulbs to reward you in the spring.

Why would a gardener want to plant tulips, crocus, daffodils and such? With gardens full of blooming plants why bother with all that digging in the fall? In a word: flowers. In climates where the growing season is long and starts early, the flowers of the spring bulbs are just a companion theme in the spring symphony. In our short season they sing alone until the rest of the garden catches up. Bulb flowers extend our blooming season by six weeks or more at a time when we are all sick to death of winter. It is no wonder that they are so often linked with the concepts of hope and rebirth. Northern gardeners need this season extension more than most anyone else I can think of.

Where I work, they sell a collection of bulbs that they call the "100 Days of Color". Among the bulbs selected are some of the earliest to bloom as well as members of the genus Allium that include many summer-blooming species. The range will truly cover 100 days and blend the collection's blooms seamlessly into early perennial bloom. There are over 250 individual bulbs in that collection, but you could do the same with a lot fewer bulbs by carefully choosing your own sequence and the number of bulbs of each kind.

The most important thing about growing bulbs in your garden is planning what bulbs to use and where to use them. Most spring-blooming bulb plants have adapted to life in deciduous woodlands (those where the trees lose their leaves in fall.) so they come up early, bloom and ripen their foliage before the leafy canopy above them robs them of the sun. So choose your locations based on that necessary spring sun.

Bulbs are generally classed as the majors and the minors. The major group being the tulips, daffodils and hyacinths. If asked, you would find that there are many people who believe that those three and crocus are all there is to spring bulbs. That's unfortunate for them because they miss the subtleties of the minor bulbs. The minor bulb group includes, but is not limited to, the snowdrops, squill, Fritillaria, crocus, and the others mentioned here.