Spring Flowering Garden -My Latest Hits and Misses

I find one of the challenges with gardening is the delay between doing something and seeing the result. Unless you make notes and remember to refer to them, you don’t learn from your successes – or failures. So I’m forcing myself to pause, look at my Spring flowering garden and learn a few lessons now from the hits and misses, before I forget!

Otherwise, like a goldfish, I’ll swim around to next year and repeat the same mistakes again – and not remember to repeat the successes!

So excuse me if this week’s blog is a bit of a jumble of observations and random thoughts.

White Spring Flowering Bulbs

First up has to be the metal containers I planted in October. My aim was to have a display of white flowering bulbs at the front of our cottage in the spring. Obviously when I planted the spring flowering bulbs back then I couldn’t tell how they were going to turn out. Well I can report the effective is fab-u-lous! As a ‘Strictly’ judge would say!

I wanted a mix of plant shapes, scents, some good for polinators, an extended season of blooms and a frosty white effect. I thought white would look good with the metal containers.

The bulbs I chose back in October have really ticked the boxes. So I can heartily recommend:

• Crocus Jeanne d’Arc
• Muscari White Magic
• Hyacinth Carnegie
• Puschkinia Libanotica
• Narcissus Thalia

The crocuses came first and were dazzling! The early bees loved them!

Then the plump hyacinths bullied their way up through the soil. They had the most incredible scent, and sturdy stems so they didn’t bend too much – a feature of this variety.

The pushkinia was lovely and with a stripe of blue – accentuated the whiteness of everything else.

The Narcissus Thalia are yet to fully flower, but those which are open are looking gorgeous. They have more than one flower per stem and with their drooping heads, I think they look more elegant than most daffodils.

As for the Muscari White Magic, while I can often take or leave most blue muscari, this white variety has converted me! I love it.

In short, as Spring flowering bulbs go, these are all a big dazzling hit. Obviously once the containers finish flowering I will want to empty them and fill them with something else. This leaves me with the wonderous white Spring flowering bulbs. What to do with them? Well, I’m going to plant them out under my cherry tree, creating a sort of white glade.

Planting Under The Cherry Tree – A Snowdrop Experiment

The cherry tree was given to me by an old friend, Liz, when my Dad died. I planted it near our patio. It frames one of the exits from the patio into the rest of the garden. It obviously has huge sentimental value. But sadly, it’s blighted by leaf curl every single year (as cherry trees can be). Also the pigeons love it! They shred its leaves as sidle up to each other on its branches – ALL summer long. I seriously think pigeons spend their every waking moment thinking about sex. When they’re not doing this the pigeons make themselves even more popular with me by eating the two or three cherries that the poor old tree has the temerity to produce!

So I’m constantly look at ways to improve the potential of this precious tree. In spring, before it comes into leaf, the tree provides a lovely architectural shape. So I thought I could make it more of a feature at this time of year by putting some bulbs at its base. To this end, last year I moved a few snowdrops to position them under the tree.

I divide my snowdrops while they’re in flower. It’s probably not the regulation way to do things, but I find it works for me, and it means I can properly picture the snowdrops in their new position. Anyway, in February 2021 I moved about 8 little clumps of snowdrops to under the cherry tree. My only fear was that the base of the tree might not provide the right conditions for them. Well I’m pleased to report they have flourished. They popped up this year good as gold – and looked smashing.

So I’m going to build on this effect, but keeping the white theme, as I think it works really well. I’m going to plant out all of the aforementioned white bulbs from my metal containers to create a glorious mixed glade running under the tree and beyond. The position isn’t as sunny as the front of my cottage so the bulbs may not perform as well. It will definitely be a bit of an experiment. But surely that’s half the fun of gardening – trying new things. This time next year I’ll be reporting on whether that idea has worked!

Spring Flowering Tulips

I have a raised bed of tulips at the bottom of my garden. I created this at the end of 2020 and in the spring of 2021 it came into bloom and was a huge hit. The display was amazing.

But one of my experiments from last year was to see how some of the tulips would do if I left them in situ for a further year. Well, the answer for me is not brilliantly. Although I planted them deep, deadehead regularly and fed the leaves with liquid tomato feed after flowering, they have lost a lot of their va va voom.

So that I could compare, I added to the raised bed some completely new tulips. And these new additions are easily out-performing those left over from last year. Indeed the new additions are phenomenal. (I’m not going to name names here. I’ll do a completely separate blog reviewing my 2022 tulip choices later on, once the later flowering tulips have done their stuff.)

This creates a quandary for me. Am I to dig out the whole area each year and fill it full of new tulips. Or do I leave the old ones in there until they really fizzle out? Given that this bed is meant to be a major part of my sustainable flowers challenge (I want to avoid buying any supermarket flowers for the home moving forwards) I need the raised bed to be productive. That means I ought to be brutal and replace each year. But my gardening heart says otherwise. I can’t bear the thought of ditching a bulb which may still have some life left in it. So I’ll maybe do a bit of both. Have one part of the raised bed full of completely new tulips and another part acting as a retirement home for my old tulip bulbs!

Tulips in Container

Its too early for many of my tulips in containers to come up. However those in my arc of containers running across the lawn are early flowering Mondials. They’re in full bloom. Again, these are some I planted in November 2020. They flowered beautifully last year and I and left in for this year as an experiment. To be fair to the tulips still look pretty lovely. But they are diminished from last year. And ultimtely spring flowering tulips aren’t going to work in these containers. That’s because the planters also contain clematis. So even if the bulbs last a couple of years, they won’t perform indefinitely. And I don’t want to go delving into the containers to replace bulbs, once the clematis have established themselves. I’ll disturb their roots too much.

All in all, the combination of tulips and clematis is a bad one. So once the Mondials have finished, I’ll dive into the containers and remove them. I need to think up a better, permanent underplanting for the clematis – or put the clematis elsewhere and rethink the containers all together!

Spring Flowering in my Stone Trough

This time last year I planted up a magnificent stone trough which Mr F-W had given me for my birthday. So, I’ve had a full year to evaluate its planting to see if my choices of container plants for shade have worked through all of the seasons. I’m pleased to report that broadly they have.

The trough which is in a fairly shaded position is planted with:

• Heuchera Wildberry – lovely purple ruffled leaves, and airy spikes of pinky white flowers in early summer
• Heuchera Silver Scrolls – stunning silver leaves with purple veins. The leaves are purple on their underside, it has white flowers in the summer on really elegant stems
• Heuchera Lime Marmalade – amazing dense ruffled bright lime green leaves and white flowers from late spring to late summer.
• Braun’s Holly Fern – lovely elegant fresh green fronds all year round
• Scaled Male Fern – again really elegant and an all year round performer
• Snowdrops – I divided a clump in my garden and popped some in the container
• Geranium Dusky Crug – with dark bronzed leaves, it forms the most incredible mound with pretty pink flowers in June, July and August which show up beatifully against the dark leaves
• Lamprocapnos spectabilis ‘Alba’ – or Dicentra as it used to be called (why do they change the names of plants!!) This is a bit of an experiment as by rights it will grow too big, but I think in shade its growth will be more stunted – well that’s the plan!

The spring flowering snowdrops came up this year as hoped, and looked fantastic in amongs the ferns. While during the rest of the year everything else was wonderful. The only downside is that the Heuchera Wildberry has died. And stupidly this happened before I had a chance to take cuttings from it. I’ve quickly tried to salvage some but I don’t think they’re going to take. So I may need to get another one of these plants as it looked STUNNING last year. This time, I’ll take some cuttings from it as an insurance policy.

So that’s it for now..a bit of a ramble though my garden. The lessons I’ve learned and observations I’ve jotted down so far.

By the way…if you want more ideas for Spring flowering plants – you may find this selection useful

Happy gardening!