Spring bulbs part II: the good, the bad, the ugly

If you thought I was done talking about spring bulbs you were mistaken

It’s been approximately two weeks since I wrote a newsletter about spring bulbs. In the intervening time, I have received a box of impulsively ordered bulbs (containing 50 dutch irises, 50 sparaxis, 100 ixias and 100 ranunculi) and I have decided that I have more to say. The first of which is that if ‘ixias’, ‘sparaxis’ and ‘ranunculi’ sound like words from a foreign language: read on, because these are the bulbs you need in a Perth garden, and today I want to help you fall in love with them.

Now, there are many reasons why people don’t grow bulbs: maybe you always lose them in your garden beds, or they only ever bloom for one season and then seem to vanish (probably rotting in said garden beds). Maybe you find them too intimidating (which way up should you plant those weird finger-like ranunculus bulbs??), or maybe you always miss the window and forget to plant them.

Today, I am here with my hefty box of bulbs, and I intend to disabuse you of all of your anti-bulb ideas and give you a list of my favourite bulbs to grow in a Perth garden - they are easy, they are beautiful, they will convert you to bulb growing for the rest of your life. And maybe I sound like a zealot for tubers, drunk sick on daffodil nectar, but here is my reasoning: grow just a few spring bulbs - a teeny pot of grape hyacinths, a patch of jonquils, a bed of snowdrops - and you will never feel the same way about winter again.

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Winter is gloomy. It is grey and dark and cold and after about three unbroken days of clouds it’s easy to turn into a morose lump of cold porridge. But sow yourself a pot of spring bulbs now and even in the greyest of days their green shoots will greet you each morning, bursting hopefully up from the soil, harbingers of sunny days on the horizon.

I’m getting carried away. Point is, spring bulbs are easy, beautiful, and everyone needs them in their life.

Come, take a sip of my Kool-Aid, it tastes delicious.

Here’s how to grow spring bulbs (part 2).

8 tips for spring bulbs

Ditch hard-to-please bulbs

I’m not surprised many people are put off growing bulbs. A lot of bulbs are bloody hard work. Some bulbs don’t like being left in the soil over winter (they rot) so you’re tasked with remembering where you planted them (unlikely) and having the presence of mind and organisational skills to dig them up at the end of the season (ridiculous), store them somewhere sensible for another 9 months (ugh) and plant them back in the soil in time for next spring (ha!).

Remembering, being organised, timely and sensible are really not my strengths. And a lot of people get put off wonderful parts of gardening simply because they’ve made it too hard for themselves to enjoy! If you like lifting and storing bulbs, by all means, go for it. But if you cbf, don’t worry, there are plenty of low maintenance bulbs you can grow that don’t require any of this nonsense.

I also recommend steering clear of bulbs that need to be put in the refrigerator in order to simulate a proper cold winter. These bulbs are meant for chillier climes and look gorgeous in the Northern Hemisphere, or even in Tasmania, but as far as I’m concerned they’re too much work for gardens in our climate.

So, which bulbs are finicky and hard to please? Peonies, for a start. Peonies need a proper frost to flower, so would have to be dug up and refrigerated every damn year if you want them to bloom. I believe they also don’t much like root disturbance, which is a bit inconvenient if you have to dig them up every year to shove them in the fridge for three months. Not worth it!

Tulips, I have mixed feelings about. They tend to only look good in their first year, so if you’re ok with having one gorgeous display followed by underwhelming blooms in the years that follow (or sometimes no blooms at all) then that’s totally fine. But I find it hard to enjoy the first-year blooms knowing that they’re most likely a one-and-done affair.

Same goes for hyacinths, although that might say more about my tendency to neglect my bulbs. Perhaps they’d bloom well in their second year if I fed and nurtured them. But I find they never bloom as densely after the first year and are a bit… meh. Their scent is absolutely gorgeous though, and they do usually come up again each year, so sometimes I chuck a few in.

Thing is, there are SO many bulbs that do wonderfully, require very little of your time or attention, and will bloom beautifully from one year to the next. These are much more satisfying to grow and gentler on your wallet (because you’re not constantly replacing them every year). These are the good bulbs.

Embrace the good bulbs

Good bulbs, in my books, don’t need lifting, they don’t rot in the soil, they don’t need refrigeration and they come up looking every bit as beautiful in their second, third and fourth years as they did in the first. Some even spread, meaning that after a few years your patch will have multiplied, you can dig them up, split them up and spread them further around your garden. Good Bulbs.

Here are the Good Bulbs. There are more, of course, but these are my favourites for spring and a great place to start:

Sparaxis

Hails from South Africa so loves our climate. Explodes in the hottest, boldest riot of colour, in fire engine reds, pinks, burnt oranges and whites, with a striking, differently coloured ‘eye’ in the centre of the flower.

Ixias

Also called African corn lilies, these are another South African export. Equally bold in colour and tolerant of our hot weather, these have tall, wiry stems that shoot up from strappy leaves, with a burst of flowers on the top, almost like a cross between a gladiolus and a freesia. 

Spring Star Flowers

AKA Triteleia - these come in whites, pinks and baby blue. I have some blue ones in a little pot of succulents. The bulbs burst up above the grey, fleshy succulent leaves and look gorgeous every spring. Super easy to grow and great for pots because the flowers are so teeny tiny they’d likely get lost in your garden beds.

Ranunculus

Utterly gorgeous, voluptuous flowers on tall stems, these make a great cut flower and are nice and easy to grow. They’re not actually a bulb, what you plant when you grow ranunculus is a ‘corm’ - an oddly shaped, gnarled looking thing that looks a bit like a wizened old monkey hand. Sow with monkey fingers pointing down into the earth. They’re also called buttercups! Isn’t that lovely.

Last spring’s ranunculi all pink and buttercup-y

Freesias

Beautiful fragrance! These make a great cut flower and bloom wonderfully year after year. Mine are a bit floppy in their current position (they’re not getting enough sunlight) so make sure to put yours in a sunny spot so they’ll grow vigorously upwards to the sun.

Narcissus

Narcissus is a genus of spring flowering bulb that includes daffodils and jonquils. Both daffodils and jonquils are a kind of narcissus, so if you want to sound fancy and keep things simple you can call them all narcissus. These bloody beautiful, reliable, gorgeously happy and easy-to-grow spring bulbs are native to Southern Europe and North Africa (which is why they don’t require frosts to bloom and why they do so well in our climate!). Narcissi are my favourite bulbs to sow direct in my garden beds - they come up reliably and look absolutely beautiful. And because the bulbs are quite big I find I tend not to lose them in the garden beds. 

Daffodils are great but they’re even better when enjoyed with a beer that has daffodils on the label

Anemones