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You are > Home > A cheap and reliable spring bulb
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Wednesday, September 06, 2006
A cheap and reliable spring bulb
By Charlie Wilkins
Days have cooled a little and soon they will dawn with crisp frosts and golden mists providing marvellous opportunities for the gardener to savour the delights of flowers that display their luminous autumnal colours. For most gardeners,these portents of harsher times ahead are not in the least depressing; on the contrary, they herald the approach of yet another planting season,another chance to improve on their skills at managing better the things they like to grow, and coaxing nature at every opportunity.
Popular autumnal flowers such as dahlias, chrysanthemums, hardy fuchsias and Japanese anemones will continue up to the first frosts but after this, we have to rely on evergreen shrubs for colour and interest.It is only after Christmas however that the first of the bulbs arrive and how I long to see these push their noses out of the cold, hard ground. Some of their tiny flowers are so delicate and artistically marked (and so deliciously fragrant!) that they are best grown in special raised beds or in pots and containers indoors, in order for us to be able to appreciate them properly.
A number of spring crocus come into this category as do the miniature bulbous iris, reticulata, whose fragrance would not be lost on an expensive aftershave.
Another delightful miniature I would like to introduce you to today is the remarkable bulb, called Muscari ‘armeniacum’. Commonly known as the Grape Hyacinth, there is no more reliable plant at providing a rich blue covering at ground level during the period mid March to end of April. Its tight cones of little bells would look magnificent underneath the likes of a Cornus controversa or the spring magnolia known as M. ‘stellata’. If you never had the likes of these, you could still use ‘armeniacum’ to march up along the front of a border pushing its spears up among primroses and daffodils, dwarf tulips and polyanthus. Around any form of Hellebore ‘orientalis’ (but in particular the white forms) they would look distinctly appropriate making a blue haze which could easily look as fresh as a geisha girl in full make-up and cosmetics on a fine April morning.
This muscari then is an upper-class beauty which I have come to value for its easy cultural requirements, excellent naturalising ability and utter reliability. Other muscari varieties include ‘Sky Blue’ which is a paler blue with white rim, ‘White Beauty’ which opens in an immaculate white but fades to a light rose pink, and a double form called ‘Blue Spike’ which is especially showy and suitable for bedding schemes. At least look for some of these-you’ll delight in their blooms come the spring and go on to increase your plantings in the years following. As to cost, suffice to say that none are expensive.
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