A garden is not complete without spring blooming bulbs. That is my motto, and the motto of most avid gardeners. If you think you don't have room, think again! Bulbs are tucked IN BETWEEN the crowns of your perennials. They surround cut back ornamental grasses. They are planted at the feet of your shrubs. look at the photo above. There are two yellow flowered perennials blooming, Senecio (now Packeria) aurea and Dornonicum. Otherwise what you are seeing are the leaves of ferns, hostas, and a ton of other perennials that are not in flower yet. Now, cover up the blue flowers of the wood hyacinth bulbs. Boring. Those bulbs have naturalized a lot since this photo was taken and now, every May, the blue is even more pronounced. This shade garden has over 200 daffodils in it along with lots of snowdrops and many hyacinths. Yet, now, in late October, every square inch is covered with perennials. You would never know the spring blooming bulbs were there.

Look at the photo on the left. You will see an absolutely stunning display of May blooming, really fragrant 'Tahiti' daffodils. Look at the base of the flowers. That's the crown of a blue perennial bachelor's buttons just emerging. That won't bloom until late May. Behind is a clump of daylily foliage. That won't bloom until July. So, this would be an all-green garden for at least another month without these bulbs in the picture.

A small part of one of our client's gardens is shown on the right. Variegated hosta leaves and Astilbe foliage takes center stage. There are delicate blue Jacob's ladder flowers dotted about. But what drew your eye? The red tulips. By June, they will be dormant and cut down and you will not even see a gap.

Working spring and early summer blooming bulbs into your landscape is not only easy, it is fun. Try planting bulbs with your kids or grandkids. Make fun signs to mark them and watch their delight next year when they come up and flower. As we say in the trade, it's as easy as Dig, Drop, Done!

We still have lots of bulbs on our shelves and have just placed our last reorder for the season. Last week we got in two more boxes of the giant Allium 'Globemaster', shown above in early summer with the creamy yellow Fritillarias that I featured last week and purple perennial bachelor's buttons. All three of these come back year after year in the new border along the road.

Don't forget to protect your investment in bulbs with Repellex Systemic. My crews LOVE this organic product and so do I. Its main ingredient is capsaicin, which is essentially VERY hot pepper. It gets drawn up into the bulbs as they are growing roots and lasts for three months. By then, the ground has frozen and the bulbs are dormant. In the spring, you reapply the Repellex Systemic and it will protect the bulbs while they are blooming and growing their leaves which will feed the bulb for the following year. We always use it with tulips and crocus, the two most eaten or dug up bulbs we plant. We also use it with our precious perennials and shrubs, especially if voles are a problem underground.

To better understand how to plant bulbs, click on THIS LINK and watch a video I made. And then get in here and grab some bulbs while we still have a good selection in stock. We add bulbs to almost all of our client's gardens. All of my staff plants bulbs every year. We pot some of them up for forcing. Once you have grown them, you too will be repeating our mantra...

You can NEVER have too many spring blooming bulbs!