Bulbs for autumn colour

Bulbs for autumn colour, Plant now to boost post-summer borders

In an ideal world a garden contains something to catch the eye all year round, but sometimes things start to drop off when summer comes to an end. An easy way of creating seamless colour is to plant autumnflowering bulbs – and this is your last chance to do so this year.

There are bulbs for every situation and soil. Autumn crocuses and Sternbergia, plus cheerful yellow winter aconites, look stunning naturalised in lawns and under trees. Borders can easily be brightened by bold dahlias, tall nerines with their clusters of trumpetshapes blooms in shades of pink and hardy Cyclamen coum that take over flowering in shady areas in late winter.

My favourite autumn flowering bulb is Gladiolus murielae, which has white flowers with blotched maroon centres. It grows well in pots as well as borders, though the corms do best if lifted after flowering and stored somewhere frost-free and dry through winter.

Bulbs do best in free-draining soil, so if you garden on clay dig in plenty of well-rotted manure or compost to increase drainage and nutrients. If you want to plant your bulbs in containers and expect them to be there for a year or more, use loam-based John Innes No3 and be prepared to lift and divide the bulbs after a few years.

A candidate for dry shade

While planting for autumn I removed some inherited daffodil bulbs from a shady border against the house. 

They weren’t performing well, so I replaced them with a pink-tinged Astrantia major ‘Roma’ (also known as masterwort). 

These long-flowering perennials like sun or shade and we already have a white one thriving in a similar dry and shaded border. 

I mulched the planting hole with wellrotted compost and watered the plant well. It will need frequent watering while it gets established and then hopefully it will romp away.

How to plant bulbs

1. Dig over the soil to remove weeds, roots, stones and debris, and fork in lots of well-rotted organic matter.

2. Plant the bulbs at three times their own depth and one bulb’s width apart, with the pointed end facing upwards.

3. Cover the bulbs with soil and tamp down the surface with the back of a rake and water well. Mark their position.

4. You can also plant bulbs in pots at the same depth and spacing as before. Use multipurpose John Innes No2 for one season, or John Innes No3 for longer-term plantings.

sources:

Amateur Gardening, July 2018

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: