Bulbalicious

Bulbs are so delicious you could eat them with a spoon. Well, not eat perhaps - although this has been done in the Netherlands in WW2 during the Hunger Winter of 1944 - but certainly plant them with it.
I do, I plant most of the small bulbs like crocus, muscari, fritillaria, some alliums, snowdrops, winter aconites and anemones with a spoon.
I love bulbs, they are such powerhouses, aren't they, and pack quite a punch.
It's amazing to see what gorgeous flowers come from such in essence unprepossessing bulbous lumps.
First you plant the little darlings and after several months of looking at a dull brownish grey garden suddenly WHAMMO you get hit in the solar plexus by wonderfully vibrant colours. They simply sock you in the eye and you take it like a lamb.
Planting scheme Jacqueline van der Kloet

Bulbs, let there be bulbs, zillions of them!
Designed by Jacqueline van der Kloet

Your visual cortex may be in danger of serious overload but hey, you only live once, right?

Regular visitors have sussed by now that yours truly is Dutch so bulbs come naturally to me but they could to you too, you don't have to be Dutch to wallow in bulbs.
Designed by Mother Nature

Mother nature is pretty good with bulbs too as shown in the pic above.
Planting loads and loads of the same bulbs does work but as we do not all have many acres to play with, a smaller amount of bulbs will do too, even though its impact will be slightly less spectacular.
Designed by Jacqueline van der Kloet

You could easily stuff a bed up to the gills with bulbs to create a similar effect as shown in the picture above. Frankly, I think you 're insane if you don't plant at least tens of thousands of bulbs in your garden, provided you have the right climate for it and enough dosh.

But bulbs on a very small scale work too.
Yesterday I bought these hyacinths which are now hiding in a dark cupboard for 6 weeks until they are ready to come out. They were only 80 euro cents each, including the glass. Budget gardening rocks.
Here are some of the bulbs I bought this Autumn and every year it's the same old thing; in Autumn - when I'm planting them - I think that I've bought far too many bulbs and where am I going to put them all, but come next Spring I find that it's Not Nearly Enough and that I must buy more. Much More. Very Much More!
I'm still planting bulbs. I started planting them in October, went diligently on during November and am still at it in December. Contrary to popular belief there isn't really much of a plant-by date on bulbs. As long as the soil is not frozen solid or covered in 6 feet of snow, or both, you can bung them in. Even as late as January or February.
Last July I discovered that I still had some Anemones de Caen to plant, so I did after soaking them in tepid water overnight. And as a result I had Anemones in flower in November and even now there are still some left.
Flowering Anemones in December are weird but wonderful.
It's not often that you have Anemones from your own garden in flower under the miniature Christmas tree.
In the Potager I've been scattering bulbs, casting them like the proverbial bread on the waters and having a ball with it. I've mixed a lot of different bulbs together (tulips, daffodils, muscari, fritillaria uva vulpis, allium roseum) in a big pot and then scattered them about with gay abandon. And I've bunged in an underplanting of blue forget-me-nots and white Aubrieta. Can't wait to see the result next Spring.
The Tea Garden in Weesp, Jacqueline van der Kloet's garden

If it looks anything like this I will be frightfully chuffed, not to mention smug.

copyright 2009 Y.E..W. Heuzen