Bulbs are like little jewel boxes that you bury in the fall and then forget about. When you need spring the most, they arrive as pearls held above the cold earth.
In fall, the bulb is a fully formed if embryonic flower, programmed to grow with moisture, cold and then warmth and longer days.
So unless your spring bulbs are disturbed by squirrels or voles, or you put them in a swamp, or you leave them in a string bag until March, they are guaranteed to bloom. They are one of the few ironclad warranties in gardening.
That makes them ideal for beginners, as does their lesson that the best things in gardening are worth waiting for.
What is less obvious is that bulbs never lose their spell for seasoned gardeners, either. The bulb world is just too diverse and beautiful to become wearisome.
As the garden writer Louise Beebe Wilder wrote in her 1936 book, “Adventures With Hardy Bulbs”: “It is what I do not know rather than what I do know, that makes gardening eternally interesting to me.”
It is another book, this one hot off the press, that continues to kindle the coals of bulb desire.
Its author, Anna Pavord, a distinguished British writer, sums up her passion for bulbs thus: “I like the way they shoot into flower, do their thing, and then thoughtfully put themselves away again.”
Her book “Bulb” ($40) is a fittingly lavish paean to her favorite form of plant, with scrumptious photographs by Andrew Lawson.
Pavord doesn’t limit her gaze to spring bulbs, though she calls the tulip, in all its forms, the queen of all bulbs. I agree, until I see a snow white show daffodil with a salmon pink cup.
Bulb lovers are an inclusive lot, lumping other types of storage organs into the assortment: corms (crocus, gladiolus), tubers (gloriosa lily, winter aconite) and rhizomes (anemones, trillium).
Reading the book and ogling the pictures, I realize how many more varieties I’d love to grow and haven’t.
Pavord and Lawson have convinced me that my garden is lacking in both spring- and fall-flowering crocus, anemones, certain tulips and alliums. Alliums are the flowering onions that put up the lovely, usually purple globes on green drumsticks in May, after the tulips fade.
Pavord reminds us too that there is a whole crocus world beyond the large-flowered Dutch hybrids and even the daintier and early Crocus tommasinianus.
I need to get my hands on Crocus angustifolius, golden yellow brushed with deep purple; Blue Bird, a confection in white, purple and yellow; and Gypsy Girl, a strong yellow with brown-purple streaking on the outer petals.
“One of the few infallible rules of gardening is that no garden can have too many bulbs,” writes Pavord. “Splurge. It is the only way.”
It’s not too late
Western Washington’s climate is ideal for growing bulbs and, fortunately, it’s not too late to put them in the ground now for spring color.
If your soil is workable and not frozen or too wet, you can plant bulbs just about any time in fall.
Dec. 1 is a commonly recommended cutoff date because it gives the bulbs the required 12 weeks of lower temperatures they need get rooted and do their thing come spring. However, some gardeners who have planted as late as February have reported successful, though later than normal, blooms.
Spring bulbs do best in free-draining soil and a sunny location. You can improve the soil with compost. Bulbs in deep shade will peter out. To avoid rot, take care not to bruise or nick bulbs when planting.
Bulbs should be set roughly 2 1/2 times their width, as shallow as 2 inches deep for snowdrops, as deep as 7 inches for the largest daffodil bulbs. In deer territory, plant daffodils and alliums.
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