The Seasonal Box: Spring part 3

I. danfordioe is another early dwarf, this time yellow, as is I. histrioides, of which the most commonly found variety is ‘Major’ at 4 inches high and with deep blue flowers splashed with yellow in the centre.

I. reticulate, 6 inches, comes in a range of blues: ‘Harmony’ is dark blue, ‘Cantab’ light blue, ‘J. S. Dijt’ a warm purple. A feature of these tiny irises is that they flower when the leaves are very immature and in some cases all but absent. Later the leaves can grow quite tall but by this time you will probably have planted them out in the garden. Whether they will flourish there is a matter of luck—I. danfordiae is never very robust—but it is always worth a try. Bulbous irises could be planted in a window box but I would rather see them in shallow containers— they need only be planted 22 inches deep—and close together for maximum impact. In a 12 inch pot I would plant a dozen of the tiny bulbs, then put them somewhere where they can be seen close up and also smelled.

If you love woodland bluebells, Ocilla non-scripta, you would also enjoy some of the siberians, O. sibirica, which comes along with the crocuses in March and stays at a neat 4 inches. Or tryO. tubergeniana, another mini, with white or china blue bells. Again plant these close together in pans rather than in boxes.

Snowdrops, again for a shallow pan, come in an astonishing number of different varieties many of which can only be told apart by enthusiasts. The common snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis, can vary in height between 3 and 8 inches and another fairly easily obtained snowdrop, G. elwesii, is taller at 6— I 0 inches. The former flower from January and the latter February to March. The only snag with snowdrops is that many of those little white bulbs offered for sale in the autumn will never actually produce a flower. Plant a dozen and if you are very lucky you may get three up the first year and five years later be even luckier to discover that they like you and have established themselves from seed.

Since a failure rate of two out of three is unacceptable in container gardening you will have to buy your snowdrops in the green’, that is as divisions of recently flowered clumps in spring. These are not often to be found in garden centres but specialist growers will supply them by post. This makes them more expensive, even for the very common varieties. Don’t go for the more unusual ones as these are not only very expensive but are also best left to the enthusiast who will jolly them along in the alpine house. Don’t, please, dig up any you see growing in the wild; this is immoral and illegal. If you must plant bulbs do this as soon as you spot them on sale; the longer they are exposed to air the less successful they will be.

While shopping for spring-flowering bulbs you will undoubtedly see others I haven’t mentioned. Erythroniums you could try, although they are rather expensive, Fritillaria meleagris you might fall for because of its delightful speckled bell flowers, but I have never got the brute to perform; Allium moly, which straggles in the garden, I once hoped would trail prettily out of a pot planted with a dwarf conifer. Well, it didn’t, it straggled just as it does in the garden. The less common bulbs are naturally expensive and the chances are that they are for the specialist to grow in a cold frame or alpine house; it might be better if you want to be more sure of success to stick to the easier ones I have suggested. Having said that, of course, there is no reason to stick to plain old ‘King Alfred’ daffodils when you could have ‘Mount Hood’, an all-white trumpet variety, or the lovely double ‘Van Sion’ with its thickly bunched centres and star-like perianth.

Autumn is the time for preparing the spring bulb box. Bulbs start to appear in the shops and garden centres in August and to be sure of getting the varieties you want it is often necessary to snap them up as soon as you see them. Not such a bad idea, if you can keep them in a cool, dry place remember it’s August—until September or in the case of tulips as late as November. If the retailer is managing his stock well he will have put them out in a cool area and in this respect some supermarkets are beautifully cool, not to say quite chilly, and so ideal for the storage of bulbs. Others, especially the chain stores and variety chains, get very hot, and bulbs that have languished in heat and under strong light for several weeks will not be in the peak condition in which they left the grower. Bulbs from specialist suppliers are ordered some time during the summer from spring-supplied catalogues and deliveries are usually made in the first week in September. This means the bulbs stay in optimum condition until immediately before posting, and if you get them into your box as soon as possible after arrival you can expect the best results. Better still, you can usually arrange to collect from the grower at the most convenient time for you. Having said all this, there is no need to get neurotic about shop or garden centre bought bulbs. The majority of bulbs you see nodding away in gardens in the spring have come from these less than perfect sources and are none the worse for it. It is only that the demands of the window box garden are for perfect flowers, all arriving at the same time and all making the best possible show.

When you select bulbs from open displays choose those that feel firm and heavy with no signs of mould, soft patches or bruising. Loose skins are not necessarily a bad sign as some, such as tulips, often shed all their skins without suffering any setback. Nevertheless I would avoid the more obviously balding specimens as this does suggest that they have been turned over and over by earlier customers and . so might have been bruised. Bulbs are sold in marketable sizes, that are sizes that will in normal circumstances produce flowers; this is particularly the case with hyacinths. But there is no need to buy the expensive, specially prepared bulbs—hyacinths and some of the bunch-flowered narcissi—as these are treated to make them flower early indoors.

Make sure you plant your bulbs the right way up. This may seem a daft suggestion but I, who should have known better, once planted a hyacinth upside down in a pot and could not understand why the soil seemed to be rising up out of the pot instead of the expected leaf tips. When I turned the pot out I found a 4 inch spike underneath, perfectly formed but pure white like a head of chicory. Restored right way up it turned green and went on to produce a perfectly good flower head, but after that the bulb was spent because it had been unable to put down a proper root system. For long life in the garden bulbs need plenty of food because they are expected to last for more than one season and to go on to produce more plants via bulblets or seed. In a box it is asking too much to expect a bulb to perform year after year and you must be resigned to starting up with new ones every autumn. Use a good soil-based or soilless compost, never garden soil, and give some plant food such as Phostrogen when the buds are about to break. But bulbs that have one flower and are then spent are not as much in need of feeding as the annuals in the summer box that you must persuade to keep their flowers coming.

You may read that different bulbs have different soil requirements—hyacinths need particularly sandy soil and not much humus while tulips and daffodils will do in a bit of clay. But I have had considerable success with hyacinths in a peat-based soilless compost, admittedly a nice open mix but hardly sand. Again the special requirements are for the long-term needs of the plant and the building up of colonies in the garden.

So what to do with all these bulbs you will have left when the box is finished? If you have a garden you have no problem. You simply heel them in, in a spare bit of the vegetable garden; that is, make a trench of the same depth as you first planted the bulb, lie the bulbs with their foliage in it and cover over with soil.

Remove flower heads so that energy is diverted back to the bulb rather than wasted in producing seed. During the summer the foliage will die back and you can lift the bulbs, dry them off and store them somewhere cool and dry until the time comes for planting them. You will probably lose some, and if you can plant the bulbs straight into their final positions you should have fewer losses. If you have no garden yourself then probably you possess friends who have and will be grateful for your cast-offs. If you haven’t any gardening friends then you could easily acquire some, simply by accosting anyone you see working in his or her garden and accept. If accosting complete strangers and plying them with dead daffodils is not your style, then there’s nothing for it but the dustbin. It may seem a shame, but how much did they actually cost? As much as a bottle of wine, or a bottle of gin, or a meal out? Fleeting pleasures, all.

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