Yellow King Alfreds we have seen before, many, many times, but ‘Irene Copeland’, 14 inches, cream, has petals as tightly packed as a small dahlia or chrysanthemum and ‘Tahiti’, at 15 inches, has a mix of golden yellow petals with a smaller bright orange centre.

To the expert a daffodil is always a narcissus but we tend to think of narcissus as the short-trumpeted variety, such as the poeticus species with their white perianths and orange crowns. Rather than bother about the different divisions—bicolour large cups, jonquilla, triandrus and so on—select daffodils for a box entirely on the information you can get about them. Most bulbs are sold from open boxes, or in packs, with a good illustration and details of size and colour; don’t fall for any with an incomplete description because although they may well be cheaper they cannot be guaranteed to provide the effect you want in a box. Read the rest of this entry »

Corny it may be, but there is no more heart-warming sight to a gardener than the emerging spikes of the first spring bulbs. If you plant your bulbs early in boxes of good peaty compost— not bulb fibre, some of which is about as much good as sawdust—you should see the first signs of growth soon after Christmas. As I write (in early March) I have snowdrops and crocus, both the tiny species crocus, which I prefer, and the big fat hybrids, which I like less but have to admit are a welcome splash of colour just now. Then there are Eranthis hyemalis, the winter aconite, which has buttercup flowers surrounded by a frilly ruff of leaves as early as February and so is beginning to go over now, and chionodoxa, which have blue, pink or white star-shaped flowers; C. gigantea reaches 8 inches in height and has large pale violet-blue flowers with a paler centre and C. luciliae ‘Alba’ reaches 5 inches and has white flowers. The pink form C. luciliae ‘Pink Giant’ reaches 6 inches; it is not always easy to get hold of but worth growing if you can find it. Read the rest of this entry »