Monday 5 November 2007

A Nice Green Leaf: Spring bulb planting

Emma_1_2By Emma Townshend



While writing the piece about cheering up your spring garden I went off to Hillier’s garden centre where they were offering a day of container planting. They provided free compost and planting advice, if you brought your own pots along and then paid for bulbs.



We spent ages choosing – in fact it would have been brainy to have decided a colour scheme in advance, really. But eventually went for quite tasteful whites (tulips) and also blue muscari and dwarf narcissi, with white hellebore plants in the pots to give a bit of winter colour and shape.





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You build the pot up in layers. Bulbs can tolerate not being at exactly the right depth, and you need the layers to fit everything you want into the pot – for colour from January until May. Start with a layer of the biggest bulbs you have - probably hyacinths or tulips. Then add another layer, fitting in your plants at the right level.

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Put the smallest bulbs in the very top layEmma_4_2
er, and don’t forget some
plant food for best performance. Very satisfying! Look out for similar
offers near you – we made all the mess at the nursery, not at home; and
didn’t haven’t to carry any bags of soil, as well as saving the cost of
the potting compost itself.

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