Design Tips for a Zinger of a Spring Bulb Garden

Designing a bulb garden is like planning any other garden space, except you won't see any results for many months. Decide the effect you want next spring, and then select the types of flowers and bulb spacing and arrangements that will give you that effect.

In garden design, you generally grow the taller varieties in the back of the garden and shorter varieties in the front. Consider this when you choose bulbs and flowers, but also think about the blooming time of the bulbs. With the available range of early, mid-season, and late blooming bulbs, you can plant a bed that will have continuous color for two months or more.

Try placing a mid-season medium or tall flowering variety in front of a shorter early season variety. As the early season flowers and foliage wither and fade, the new mid-season beauties will be coming into bloom, hiding the early plants as they complete their cycle. You can use the same idea and plant annuals in front of bulbs so the annuals will be tall enough to hide the fading flowers. Or plant the bulbs behind perennials, which will grow taller and hide them as they fade.

Another trick is to plant bulbs double-decker. This is especially effective in beds where you want en masse plantings and lots of continuous color. Prepare the bed about ten inches deep, a couple of inches deeper than your tulips or daffodils need to be planted. With two inches of loosened deep soil below them, set your large bulbs in the color arrangements and configuration you want. Cover them with about three inches of soil and firm it down. Then plant another layer of bulbs. This second layer will be smaller, shallower flower bulbs like crocus or grape hyacinth. Cover them and firm the soil in place. If you plant a mixture of early, mid, and late bloomers, the bed will have flowers all spring.

Bone meal used to be the recommended fertilizer for bulbs. It is almost all phosphorus, and is the main ingredient in packaged "Bulb Food". Recent advice is to forego using bone meal at planting time. Dogs and all kinds of digging and burrowing rodents are attracted to it, and they will sniff out the bone meal and dig up your bulbs. Bone meal is, after all, powdered bones from the meat processing industry. Over the years I have lost hundreds of tulip bulbs to hungry, gnawing rodents, and I had used bone meal in every planting hole.

You can use bulbs to plant specimen flowers, where you want only a splash of color in an established bed, or in a small space. Planting one bulb will give you spindly-looking results. If you plant a small cluster of two or three bulbs in a planting hole, the result will be a fuller specimen in the same space. This kind of specimen planting is very effective in perennial beds.

Naturalizing is another method of planting spring flowering bulbs. I have read instructions to prepare an area and then toss out a handfull of bulbs, then follow along and dig a hole and plant each one. I tried this once, and couldn't find all of the bulbs.

When I plant bulbs in a naturalized setting, I use a bulb planting tool that digs a hole the correct depth. It has inches delineated right on the digging part, and makes setting bulbs simple. Bulbs for naturalizing are usually sold in large bags, and they are usually varieties that will multiply rapidly and spread easily, but you can naturalize with any bulbs. The new hybrids may not multiply as quickly as the other kinds, but eventually they will fill an area.

I like to set naturalizing bulbs in twos. They spread faster than single bulbs this way, and they look fuller the first year after planting. About every four or five years you need to consider dividing the thick clumps of naturalized bulbs. You do not have to wait until fall and then wonder where the bulbs are. You can do this in the spring after they have finished blooming. I leave the foliage on the bulbs and lift the clump. Then I separate the clump, leaving a couple of mature bulbs and spreading some smaller bulblets around the area. Replant them at the same depth they were growing, and make sure to spread the roots out. You'll be able to tell how deep to plant them, because the foliage will have the telltale marks. Since the foliage provides the energy the bulbs store for the rest of the year, don't remove the dying foliage. Then take the rest of the bulbs from the clump and plant them in new areas. Be sure to water them after you move them.

If you plant bulbs under trees, you should use an organic fertilizer. I don't use bone meal in the planting hole, but after each spring's flowering I sprinkle a little bone meal around the plants and work it into the top inch of soil. They need the phosphorus. Trees are water and nutrient hogs, and bulbs that you planted under trees with plans for naturalizing can easily be starved out. During dry spells in the summer and fall, it will benefit your bulbs if you water the ground they are sleeping under.