Two bulb experts, Michael Hagen, Curator of the Rock Garden and Native Plant Garden, and Marta McDowell, NYBG instructor, author, gardener, and landscape historian, recently commented on some frequently asked questions about the gorgeous spring bulbs now blossoming in the garden . Here’s what they had to say.
Q: What are some of the easiest spring/early summer bulbs to grow?
McDowell: Narcissus seem to be almost indestructible and with so many varieties, you can have them in bloom for almost two months. Other choices: Crocosmia—graceful in leaf and flower and blackberry lily (Iris domestica or Belamcanda chinensis). Great foliage, flowers, and seed pods.
Q: What are some of the most difficult bulbs to grow, aside from climate issues?
Hagen: Climate aside, the hardest to grow are the ones that our native ground squirrels, chipmunks, woodchucks, and gophers enjoy eating. Species tulips have been a particular challenge in the Rock Garden. If it’s a warm fall (and the chipmunks are not hibernating yet) they can be dug up and eaten right after they’ve been planted.
It’s come in fits and starts this year. Snow falls one day, only to vanish in an instant through heat or a heavy rain. With all the yo-yoing we have experienced this winter, oscillating from warm to cold, the fluctuating temperatures have sent me and many of my colleagues home with lingering ailments as our bodies try to figure out what’s going on.
While walking through the Garden in these early days of spring, I notice that Mother Nature is equally confused. The persistent cold has slowed down the cycle of spring, leaving us somewhere between one and two weeks behind schedule in terms of spring bloom. Once the warm temperatures arrive in earnest, things will accelerate. What this means for now is that some of the early signs of spring–the ones that we usually like to see from our living room windows–are out and worth perusing.
The Cornelian cherries (Cornus mas) started flowering around the very end of March this year, whereas they usually bloom sometime in the middle of the month. As one of the many cheerful harbingers of spring, they’re a welcome sight; the 15-foot, multi-stemmed branching shrub is smothered with tiny umbels bursting with golden yellow, star-shaped flowers.
It’s bulb season! Our horticulturists are now in the process of sorting and planting all sorts of future beauties in the Home Gardening Center. But what about you? Got any special plans for your own spring flower beds?
As I mentioned the other week, I have been making the Garden rounds to talk to different colleagues about their favorite bulbs. We often like to use tulips here at the NYBG as part of large annual displays in springtime. We plant the bulbs in November, which then flower in May. By June, they have all been dug up and recycled in the compost pile.
The reason why tulips are not often part of permanent displays is that many varieties don’t come up consistently in subsequent years. They look glorious the first year, spotty the second year, and prove fairly anemic moving into the third and fourth years. Happily, this is not true with all tulips, and many make wonderful, long-lived additions in a garden provided they have good drainage.
Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG‘s Gardener for Public Education, and can often be found hosting gardening demonstrations on Saturdays and Sundays.
Hyacinthus orientalis
Next weekend, I will be teaching visitors to the Home Gardening Center how to properly site, plant and protect their bulbs from hungry critters. It is a demonstration that I enjoy giving every year. We examine a number of bulbs, learn all the basics and then find a few nice empty spots around the Garden to plant. It is one of the demonstrations where I like to get hands-on with visitors, encouraging them to jump in and help prepare a nice display for the spring.
Last week, I made the rounds with a few of the curators and gardeners asking them about their favorite bulbs and planting techniques. The first stop I made was to meet with Jody Payne, the curator of the Rock Garden. I asked her for some good recommendations for the homeowner.
Our discussion started with one of my favorite spring blooms for fragrance–hyacinths. Jody recommended the Festival Series as a good choice. Festival Series hyacinths have a more open form than your traditional hyacinth and they are not so prone to flop over once they are in full bloom. Each bulb produces several flower stalks providing a full display. The Festival Series comes in pink, white, and blue, with a delicious fragrance. They create a nice, naturalistic look in the garden.
The tulip has been immortalized for centuries in many ways. Recently it was celebrated as a symbol of beauty and intrigue in Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire. Pollan chronicles the history of a flower that has seduce people throughout time and through its beauty has lead them to exalt; to speculate and squander; to make careers out of hybridizing – searching for the latest sensation in color, form and beauty. These efforts have brought the tulip from the obscurity of high mountain ranges in central Asia into the world market.
Like many bulbs, tulips are planted in the fall. They are neatly tucked 6-8 inches in the ground in areas with good drainage and full sun. The bulbs put out roots in the fall and then sit there waiting until the snow melts and the temperatures in the spring warms before they shoot up and flower early in the spring.
Now is the season to start thinking about doing your window shopping – going around to different gardens and parks to see what the myriad of colorful cultivars from bulb catalogs look like in person.
As you admire these cheerful harbingers of spring take a look at their form, their height, their color. Stick your nose close to the blossom – some are fragrant – many are not. Many tulips change their color as they age. Many change their color with the light and have a translucent quality to them.
Tulips generally only last for a few years in the New York climate and are generally used as annuals. They are often used in large springtime annual displays – planted en masse in the fall and ripped out in the spring – ending up in the compost pile.
Many homeowners do not want to devote an entire area in their garden to a labor intensive display. Rather, they would like to incorporate them into their pre-existing perennials borders and foundation plantings. Last fall we had two experts from Holland come over and discuss bulbs that performed well for a number of years and were good candidates for perennial plantings.
Some of the tulips that were recommended by the International Flower Bulb Centre were:
‘Ad Rem’, ‘Ballade’, ‘Ballerina’, ‘Cape Cod’, ‘Couleur Cardinal’, ‘Flaming Purissima’, ‘Golden Apeldoorn’, ‘Maureen’, ‘Menton’, ‘Negrita’, ‘Parade’, ‘Peer Gynt’, ‘Queen of the Night’, ‘Shirley’ ‘Showwinner’, ‘Spring Green’, ‘Spring Song’, ‘Toronto’, ‘Tres Chic’, ‘West Point’ and ‘White Triumphator’. There are many more tulips that perennialize well and experimentation is always encouraged.
So how long do they last in your garden? Well, in ideal conditions in Holland many of these tulips were thriving 10-15 years later. In the New York area I would not set my hopes so high and would plan for 4 to 7 years before you are planting some new bulbs.
Some tips for helping your tulips to keep coming back every spring is to fertilize them early in the spring with either a slow-release fertilizer or organic matter such as aged cow manure just as the leaves start to poke up above the ground. Plant them in areas with good drainage and plant them slightly deeper than normal – around 8 inches deep. Once the blooms have faded remember to deadhead your flowers by snapping off the seed head. The more foliage that you leave on the more the plant will be able to photosynthesize pouring energy into the bulb for next year’s flower.
Some good perennial companions for tulips are lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis), hardy geraniums (Geranium), blue star (Amsonia), phlox (Phlox paniculata), bugleweed (Ajuga), Siberian bugloss (Brunnera), avens (Geum), and bugbane (Actaea).
Two bulb experts, Michael Hagen, Curator of the Rock Garden and Native Plant Garden, and Marta McDowell, NYBG instructor, author, gardener, and landscape historian, recently commented on some frequently asked questions about the gorgeous spring bulbs now blossoming in the garden . Here’s what they had to say.
