Going underground: a nudge
This is your friendly reminder that this is the optimal moment to order your spring bulbs. In case you think that we always get it right, here are five of our best bulb tales.
Do you remember the parable of the Wise and Foolish virgins?
One of the few things that I was good at when at school was religious knowledge - maybe, had I stuck with it, I could be an Archdeacon by now. When it came to miracles, parables or the more exciting bits of the Old Testament I was, as they say, the ant's pants. I am reminded of that particular parable because it is bulb ordering time.
The wise gardeners amongst you will be well ahead and already sharpening their trowels while the foolish gardeners will leave it too late and some rotter will have bought the last tulips.
This is a reminder to get a weave on as it has been a tough summer and stocks are likely to be troubled.
For inspiration, five Garden Collective writers share some of their bulb stories.
James Alexander-Sinclair
I first saw Tulip Sprengeri in a Chelsea Flower Show garden. You know the plant: spellbinding flowers as red as the spilled blood of unicorns. I was instantly smitten and started dreaming of spatters of crimson popping through unfurling perennials and along the edge of meadows.
Garden photographers would be banging on the gate demanding access and I would be able to give bulblets to my closest gardening friends. They would all shiver with gratitude.
That was the plan.
They are expensive and difficult plants to find but, eventually, a small envelope arrived containing a toddler's handful of bulbs which I immediately tucked into their new homes.
Now it was a waiting game: Christmas came and went, the hurricanes of February blew until finally, the apricity of early spring arrived. I knew that they were among the last tulips to flower (in late May) but I had an uneasy feeling. There were no green shoots at all. The other tulips sprouted, flowered and faded and, eventually, I realised that my precious T. sprengeri were not going to make it.
I bought them again the following year. And the next....
They say that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. I don't care, I am going to persevere confident that, one day I will be rewarded.
Grace Alexander
Like all right-thinking gardeners, I am a great believer in the motto: right plant, right place. And if this hot summer has taught us anything, it’s that working against your garden and its nature puts you on a hiding to nothing. My garden is on Somerset clay. It produces snowdrops in drifts, tulips that come back year after year, and more narcissi than I know what to do with. So why can I not resist the one bulb I know full well is wrong for me?
The snake’s head fritillary, Fritillaria meleagris, seduces me every time. I have bought more bulbs than I care to admit, and absolutely none of them has naturalised in my orchard the way they do in the Oxford water meadows. I can just about get away with a quince, but I’m far too dry for a frit. These flowers simply don’t love me back.
And so I am forced to indulge in the fast food of the plant world: a pot of them in full flower from Waitrose, £5, every April.
Joe Swift
This story has been told many times so it’s hard to know whether it’s real or an urban myth. I’ll tell it in the first person and let you decide.
In our twenties my best friend and I maintained a garden in Hampstead for a particularly annoying client who disputed our hours, paid late, was generally entitled, rude and never once made us a cup of tea.
He wasn’t keeping us on through winter- there was one more visit before the end of the month. Down the café we had already decided we would not be going back in spring and could do without the grief.
On that final visit we planted a range of spring bulbs. Perhaps we had heard the urban myth ourselves so decided to leave a little note for spring.
We had around 200 bright yellow daffs so wrote 2 large words in the middle of the lawn. The first being a classic four-letter word that began with a big fat ‘F’, the other containing three letters and started with ‘O’. In spring (after he had paid his last bill), they would be clearly visible from his large living room window. What a gardening gift!
The moral of this simple tale is to be nice to your gardeners, treat them with respect and pay them promptly.
George Plumptre
Thoughts of autumn bulb-ordering always remind me of the part this annual ritual played in the relationship between my mother and her gardener John. They were ‘together’ for some 50 years and rather like most long-term married couples, their usually sunny relationship was tempered by a selection of mini-battlegrounds.
Their views hardly changed over the years: my mother always found it exciting and an opportunity to try new things; John, who rarely liked new things, regarded it as a necessary evil to be kept to an affordable minimum.
Exchanges invariably took place at their start-of -the-day chats in the garden room and while things usually went off happily without incident, the occasional carefully judged comment such as John asking ‘has the Peter Nyssen catalogue arrived’ was the equivalent of an exploratory salvo. Things became more serious when purchases had actually been made and as my mother handed over bags of ‘Angelique’ or ‘Queen of the Night’ tulip bulbs, her enthusiasm would be dampened by ‘Don’t know where I am going to put all of these.’ Lilies were the worst; my mother had a constant craving for these luxuries but the knowledge of how much they were viewed as an extravagance meant they were usually acquired singly and doomed from the outset by a prediction they would ‘catch the beetle’.
Helen Hutchings-Cox
Bulbs are such a gateway drug, aren't they? I always want just a couple more and, before you know it, I've got hundreds.
My absolute favourite is the 'Belle Epoque' tulip. Very easy to grow, makes a great cut flower and dies back with dignity; there's something so graceful about watching it fade from a bright copper through to rose gold and then finally a dusky pink before finally sprinkling beautiful dried petals all over the soil.
I love this flower for more than just the way it looks – it fosters a sense of community for me. Without fail, if you mention this tulip to anyone that loves it (especially if you post a rather beautiful photo of it on social media) they will claim it as one of their favourites and bam, you're talking about tulips: When did you get them in the ground? What is your garden like? How magical is your wildlife? And, before you know it, you're agreeing to meet up for a cup of tea, maybe a trip to the tulip fields in Amsterdam, and you have a new friend…
That's what gardening really boils down to for me, that connection and community, and it all starts with a tiny, beautiful bulb.
What is on your shopping list this year? Are you trying new things and risking heart break, or sticking with tried and trusted old favourites?
