Tom's crocus lawn

Our good customer Tom Duff of zone-6b Essex, Massachusetts, emailed us this spring with some happy news:

“After reading at your website about growing crocus in lawns, we planted 6 bulbs of Crocus tommasinanus 25 years ago. Now we’ve got a dense, 15-foot circle of them every spring, with some ranging up to 50 feet away from the originals. I’d say there’s at least 1000 of them.

“My mother-in-law tells me ants have been spreading the seeds, and she says it helps that we don’t spread lime or fertilizer. We always let the leaves have a few weeks to recharge the bulbs before we start mowing the area.

“I’m seeing it starting in the front yard now, too. Maybe 50 have ‘escaped’ there and spread up to 15 feet across the lawn in the last couple of springs.”

Thanks for sharing, Tom! And don’t you wish all of gardening was this easy?

Tommies are the key (since not all crocus set seed) and not mowing them for a few weeks after they bloom. You can order yours now for October delivery, and learn more at our “Crocus in the Lawn” page.

winter aconites

One of the highlights of my gardening year is watching the bees buzzing madly about my winter aconites and snow crocus, happier than even I am that spring has finally begun.

Of course the populations of bees and other pollinators are in steep decline these days. But “as gardeners we can help reverse this,” writes Adam Hunt in the October 2020 Gardens Illustrated. The trick, he says, is “providing a diverse offering of flowering plants across as long a season as possible,” and he adds that “bulbs, such as crocuses, snowdrops, and nerines, that flower outside of the usual temperate growing season, are a vital food source.”

Hunt lists 26 bulbs for pollinators, ten of which we currently offer. “All are favorites,” he writes, “chosen for their beauty, reliability, and for their value to our wonderful and so important foraging insects in all their many forms.”

‘Mammoth Yellow’

Winter aconite – “One of the first blooms to appear … and much loved by bees..... Best planted in humus-rich, alkaline soil that does not dry out in summer. It will establish and naturalise under deciduous trees in light grass.” RHS Award of Garden Merit

Crocus ‘Mammoth Yellow’ – “Crocuses are one of the earliest nectar-rich flowers in spring, sought out by emerging queen bumblebees. The rich yellow of this cultivar works well against the low light levels of March.” RHS AGM

Siberian squill

Siberian squill – “This scilla is the best performer for naturalizing in light lawns and part-shade. The blue nodding bell flower begins before other scillas have started and has a long blooming period. A rewarding bulb, producing more than one stem from each bulb. We love to plant it under magnolias and deciduous shrubs such as Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘Mariesii’.” RHS AGM

Tulipa clusiana

Tulipa clusiana – “Tulips are not renowned as plants for pollinators, but they are such an essential element of a spring garden, and if you include just one, then the lady tulip is possibly the best. Its flowers have attractive dark-pink stripes on its outer petals that widen in the sunshine to produce a star, and the stunning purple markings on its basal stem are sheer beauty.” RHS AGM

Other pollinator-friendly heirlooms Hunt recommends are snowdrops, Elwes snowdrops, Anemone blanda ‘White Splendor’, snake’s-head fritillary, Narcissus poeticus recurvus (pheasant’s-eye narcissus), and English bluebells.

To help keep the pollinators in your yard buzzing happily, why not order some of these nourishing beauties NOW for delivery this fall!

As part of a major renovation, the courtyard at London’s Garden Museum has been redesigned into a lush, inspiring space – and it features our favorite canna!

“A surreal sense of wonder and of the exotic prevails” in the new garden, as though visitors are “ambling into a Rousseau painting,” says the February 2020 Gardens Illustrated, Since the pioneering horticulturists John Tradescant the Elder and Younger are buried in the garden (the Museum is housed in a former church), designer Dan Pearson wanted the garden to “rekindle the same sense of wonder that 17th-century visitors to the Tradescants’ nursery may have felt.”

Although every plant in the garden “is a treasure in itself, all of them take their place in a cogent, multi-layered composition.” Among the “cast of strong individual characters” is Canna ‘Ehemanii’, which the article describes as one of “the most magnificent of the canna lilies, with considerable heft and stature.” With its “hot pink, gracefully pendulous” flowers nodding over “huge, paddle-shaped leaves,” this striking heirloom is a key player in creating the garden’s “otherworldly atmosphere.”

To add a bit of otherworldly atmosphere to your own garden, why not give ‘Ehemanni’ a try this spring? All it needs is full sun and plenty of water – and having grown it in my own garden for years, I can’t imagine summer without gorgeous, graceful ‘Ehemanii’.

clockwise from top left: winter aconite, snake's-head fritillary, 'Thalia', Southern grape hyacinth

When Gardens Illustrated asked some of the UK’s top garden designers to name their favorite bulbs for fall planting, these four heirlooms made the cut:

Winter aconite – “Despite its diminutive nature, this aconite packs a punch by being the first early bulb to flower,” says Emily Erlam whose gardens blend seamlessly into the wider landscape. “Plant in large groups in shade or partial shade to make magical pools of rich yellow between trees or to throw up light onto a spring-flowering shrub.”

Snake’s-head fritillary – “The intricacy and complex beauty of the snake’s head fritillary never ceases to amaze me,” says Ula Maria, author of Green: Simple Ideas for Small Outdoor Spaces. “This most alien-looking plant is bound to attract everyone’s attention. Its checkered, bell-shaped flowers look impressively oversized hanging atop slender stems. Naturalized in grassy meadows, they are simply magical.”

Southern grape hyacinth (hardy NORTH through zone 5) – “I love everything about these plants,” says Jinny Blom who often works on a grand scale but is also known as a keen plantswoman. “The crimped, navy-blue, white-tipped bells look as if they’ve been drawn by a child. It’s best to naturalize them below small trees.”

Narcissus ‘Thalia’ – “This pure-white, multi-headed daffodil is all elegance and fragility, but deceptively tough,” says Andy Sturgeon who won the top prize at last year’s Chelsea Flower Show. “The petals flare backwards, thrusting the trumpet forward. Wonderful in damp, partial shade among Anemone nemerosa,” wood anemone.

When Gardens Illustrated asked several British head gardeners to recommend plants for a January 2020 article titled “Head Gardeners’ 100 Beautiful and Useful Plants,” eleven bulbs made the cut, including these three heirlooms.

Byzantine gladiolus – “A designer favorite that is changing the perception of this genus,” says Michelle Cain, head gardener at the iconic Sissinghurst Castle Gardens. “Its vivid magenta color partners well with so many other things. I love it with acid greens, such as Euphorbia palustris.”

Elwes snowdrop – “Snowdrops are priceless in any garden,” says head gardener Tom Coward of Gravetye Manor, and “this is one of the earliest, showiest, and easiest to establish. It has proved most vigorous at Gravetye” which was once the home of wild garden advocate William Robinson and today is a posh hotel.

‘Gravetye Giant’ snowflake – “This very good form of a beautiful [UK] native was selected at Gravetye Manor by William Robinson,” Coward explains. “Particularly robust and long-flowering, it will accept almost any soil but seems to thrive in our damp meadows.”

All of these treasures have won the RHS Award of Garden Merit, too – and you can order them now for planting this fall!

double ‘Pearl’, 1870

“Everyone who has a garden, or a taste for flowers, knows the tuberose,” wrote C.L. Allen in his 1893 Bulbs and Tuberous-Rooted Plants.

“Its history, however, may not be known,” he continued. “The earliest account we have of [it] is in L’Ecluse’s History of Plants, from which we learn it was brought from the Indies by Father Theophilus Minuti, a Christian missionary, about the year 1530….”

“In Parkinson’s quaint old book, The Garden of Pleasant Flowers, published in 1629, we find the following description of it ...: ‘Hyacinthus Indicus major tuberosa radice, the greater Indian knobbed hyacinth.... The tops of the stalks are garnished with many fair, large, white flowers ... composed of six leaves [petals] lying spread open as the flowers of the white daffodil ... and of a very sweet scent, or rather strong and heady.’

“The double flowering variety was a seedling raised by Mons. Le Cour, of Leyden, in Holland, who for many years would not, under any circumstances, part with a root of it … in order to be the only possessor of so valuable a plant and which he considered the finest flower in the world.”

Other than that, Allen says, the tuberose has changed little and “the only change worthy a varietal name was a ‘sport’ discovered by John Henderson, of Flushing, N.Y., growing in his field, about 1870.” This was a double “of dwarf habit, and much larger flowers [which] he at once named the ‘Pearl’.”

‘Mexican Single’, 1530

Perhaps surprisingly, although “the cultivation of the tuberose bulb was for many years confined principally to the Italian nurseries, for the past twenty-five years they have been largely grown in the United States,” Allen says, and “the markets of the world are largely supplied with American-grown bulbs.” (Today a handful of American farmers still grow tuberoses. Our ‘Mexican Single’ bulbs, for example, come to us from an Illinois family farm where they've been grown for almost a century now.)

“For field culture, prepare the ground as if for a crop of potatoes,” he advises, and plant the bulbs “just below the soil surface; if covered too deep they are not as likely to flower.”

In greenhouses, “tuberoses can be had in bloom, with a little care, nearly the whole year,” but Allen cautions against “the too common practice of filling up every vacant place in the greenhouse with tuberoses” – an indication, I suspect, of their great popularity.

As for the home gardener, he explains that “the tuberose is a gross feeder, and succeeds best in a light loam, but will grow in any soil, providing it is moist and rich. Rich it must be, without regard to other conditions. Its complete requisites are heat, water, and manure. If these are proportionate, it matters not how much there may be, the plants will consume it, and by their growth show its importance.”

Today tuberoses are still as blissfully fragrant and easy to grow as they’ve ever been – and you can order our big, sure-to-bloom bulbs now for delivery in April.

Dutchman’s breeches is a delightful little North American wildflower – and maybe something more.

In an article titled “Menominee Love Charms” posted at the website of Macalaster College’s Ordway Field Station in Minnesota, Michaela Koller writes, “The main plant [the Menominee used for love charms] is Dicentra cucullaria, more commonly known as Dutchman’s breeches. The Menominee called this plant ‘a’nimau kapotise’sa’ which is translated into: ‘the one that looks like little pants, with his hands in his pockets’” – which is remarkably like the English name for it.

“The Menominee believed that Dutchman’s breeches could be used in two ways by a man to attain the love of his desire,” Koller continues. “The first way was … by throwing a piece of the plant at her. The second way … was by chewing a piece of this plant, so that the scent would be released…. In order to insure the girl smelled this plant, the man would circle around her, until she would ‘follow him wherever he goes.’”

Learn more here or just order your own little charmers now for delivery at planting time this fall.

It’s always a pleasure when someone says something nice about your kids, dog, or bulbs.

In “Extraordinary Spring Bulbs to Plant Right Now” in the December 2019 issue of Fine Gardening, horticulturist Andrew Keys recommends seven fall-planted “standouts that are just different enough to make them alluring” – including two of our heirlooms:

‘Rip van Winkle’ daffodil – “As departures from the everyday trumpet-and-star shape of the average daffodil, flowers on this double variety explode in a flurry of feathery petals, like buttery water lilies afloat in a sea of green.”

‘Gravetye Giant’ snowflake – “Often called ‘summer snowflake’, this plant still flowers squarely in what most gardeners consider spring. Most snowflakes present as just that – delicate, elegant, white-belled petticoats with clean, green foliage. Bigger and more vigorous, ‘Gravetye Giant’ is determined to be the belle of the ball. Snowflakes are easy and unfussy, naturalizing in areas where they’re happy.”

Both of these standouts are also highly animal resistant – and we’re shipping them now!

Galanthus elwesii

If you don’t have an expert head gardener or landscape architect living next door to help you with your bulb-planting choices this fall, here are three expert recommendations we’ve gathered for you. (No need to thank us!)

Galanthus elwesii – Writing in the February 2019 issue of Gardens Illustrated, British head gardener Tom Brown calls Elwes snowdrop “a superb form of this winter favorite,” adding “I particularly enjoy growing this species, not only for the large, white flowers – which can often be twice the size of our much-loved common snowdrop – but also because of the opulent, glaucous foliage.”

‘Thalia’

The Royal Horticultural Society is also a big fan of Elwes snowdrop, having given it their prestigious Award of Garden Merit.

‘Thalia’ – In his list of “100 Most Beautiful and Useful Plants,” in that same issue of Gardens Illustrated, the renowned Swedish landscape architect Ulf Nordfjell includes this popular old daffodil.

Nordfjell describes it as “a late-flowering cultivar that produces many pure white flowers,” and says it “provides a delicate counterpoint to early shoots of perennials such as astilbes and epimediums.”

‘Duchesse de Nemours’

‘Duchesse de Nemours’ – This grand old Victorian peony is another of Nordfjell’s “100 Most Beautiful and Useful Plants.”

It’s “an old-fashioned, scented, double, creamy-white flowering peony, and a real beauty,” he writes, and “my favorite, especially among carpets of violets.” (And even though it’s over 150 years old, the ‘Duchesse’ is an RHS Award of Garden Merit winner, too.)

Dahlias and cannas were both wildly popular in the Victorian era, so it’s no surprise that two of our favorites grow today at Osborne House, the lavish country home of Queen Victoria and her garden-loving husband Prince Albert.

In 1845, according to an August 2017 article in The English Garden, “Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, then both in their twenties, bought an estate on the Isle of Wight as a seaside retreat for their growing family.” After building a grand new house, Albert redesigned the grounds, and today, thanks to extensive restoration by English Heritage, they once again reflect his vision.

“Rather endearingly, Albert is reputed to have directed work on the Osborne landscape by semaphore from the Pavilion flag tower. Victoria seems to have been less enthusiastic, complaining in her diary of the time he spent planting and pruning. In 1848, at the height of the planting operations, she spent a record 123 days on the estate so as to see as much of him as possible.”

Today “the intricate design of the parterres which was lost when the terraces were grassed over has been recreated.” ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ dahlia stars there in a dramatically dark composition with bronze-leaved castor beans, red salvia, and red-and-bronze-leaved begonias.

The lovely ‘Ehemanii’ canna with its dangling bells of deep rose-pink is also featured at Osborne House where a long row of it flowers exuberantly in the former kitchen garden.

Even if you don’t have 200-acre estate, you can garden with a touch of royal style by planting ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ this spring (and save 20%!) or by signing up for an email alert when ‘Ehemanii’ — which sold out last month in a mere three days — is available again. Cheerio!

Van Gogh was a flower-lover, to judge by the many paintings he made of them.

His sunflowers, of course, have become iconic, and his magnificent Irises sold in 1987 for a record-breaking $54 million. But there are scores of his lesser-known flower paintings in museums around the world.

Leafing through a Van Gogh book the other day, I came upon this painting titled Vase of Carnations and Other Flowers. Taking a closer look, I noticed that the starry white flowers at the top are tuberoses! In fact, to my eye they’re such a dramatic and important part of the painting that it might better be called Vase of Tuberoses and Other Flowers.

Van Gogh painted it in 1886, shortly after moving from the Netherlands to Paris where he soon began painting with the brighter colors and bolder brushwork of the Impressionists. At that time tuberoses were so popular that a Boston writer said “everyone who has a garden knows the tuberose” – and their fragrance today is just as wonderful as it was then.

You can view this painting in person at the Kreeger Museum in Washington, DC, and you can enjoy the same flowers that inspired Van Gogh by ordering your own tuberoses now for planting this spring.

If you think all snowdrops are the same, think again. Here’s what our good customer Virginia Boyett of zone-7b Perryville, Arkansas, had to say the first year one of our favorites bloomed for her:

“The ‘Magnet’ snowdrops that I planted last fall have been in bloom for about three weeks, and they are the biggest snowdrops that I have ever seen.

“On cloudy days the buds stay closed and remind me of miniature tulips hanging upside down. Stark white, they are graceful and elegant.

“On sunny days, though, the outer whorl stands literally straight out, like the blades of a helicopter. With the extra-long pedicels, the entire bloom looks as if it could take off and fly.

“The blooms keep coming, too. Each bulb has had 3-4 blooms apiece so far. I am loving it. I am just sorry I didn't order more.”

Last offered in 2014, ‘Magnet’ is back in our catalog this fall, so Virginia – and you – can order it now!

In his UK National Collection of Dicentra, Roger Brook grows 30-40 different kinds of bleeding hearts from all over the world. Although we offer just one – Dicentra cucullaria, Dutchman’s breeches – we were happy to read in the May 2018 issue of The English Garden that it’s Roger’s “current favorite.”

Dutchman’s breeches is “a diminutive, early flowering species from mountainous areas of northeastern United States and Canada,” writes author Val Bourne. “It has been grown in Britain since the early 18th century and was thought to have been sent by the Quaker botanist John Bartram (1699-1777) to Philip Miller at the Chelsea Physic Garden.”

“The exaggerated, heart-shaped flowers led the Menominee Indian tribe of Wisconsin to use this plant as a love charm,” Bourne adds. Another common name for it is “stagger weed, alluding to this plant’s toxic effect on livestock and presumably people” – which is good news for gardeners because it means that it’s deer-and squirrel-proof.

Although in his Yorkshire garden Brook says that “wet winters and slugs” make it “difficult to keep in the ground,” in colder gardens here in the US it’s usually easy to grow. In fact, I once dumped out what I thought was a pot of empty soil in a shady spot in my Ann Arbor garden and every spring since then a little colony of Dutchman’s breeches has been blooming and spreading happily there.

To see what a treat this native gem can be in your garden, order it now for fall delivery.

Tourists poured into the Romanian village of Hoghilag this past weekend for the annual Tuberose Festival.

“Just as France has the lavender fields, Romania has the fields of tuberoses,” explains festival director Claudia-Romana Rista. “With a tradition of over 100 years in growing tuberoses, Hoghilag is called today the Land of Tuberoses.”

Located in the historic Transylvania Highlands, “the largest eco-touristic destination in Romania,” Hoghilag’s tuberose fields produce upwards of 150,000 bloom-stalks per acre. Some are sold as cut-flowers, but most are harvested for use in perfumes where, according to fragrantica.com, “no note is more surprisingly carnal, creamier, or contradicting.”

Festival activities include perfume workshops, flower cooking and jewelry-making classes, films, concerts, traditional foods, and a bicycle tour of the tuberose fields.

Learn more at Romania-Insider.com and the Hoghilag Facebook page – and to enjoy your own Backyard Tuberose Festival, order a few bulbs now for spring planting!

We recently learned an old name for pink rain lilies from Russell Studebaker, Tulsa garden writer and a great friend of ours.

Russell saw a pot of them in full bloom at a garden club meeting. “The owner had gotten them long ago from her family in Missouri, but she never knew their actual name,” he wrote us.

“They called them ‘house pot lilies’ because they were always grown in an old pot that no longer served for cooking – probably enamelware, agateware, or graniteware that had developed a hole. Can’t you just imagine how nice those little pink flowers would look blooming in a blue enamelware pot?”

Rain lilies bloom when rain drenches their roots, so it makes sense that they’d thrive metal pots – although ours bloom just fine in regular terra cotta, as you can see here.

If you’re not sure how to spell tuberose, you’re in good company. Misspellings – or alternative spellings? – have been common for hundreds of years.

In 1664, for example, the great John Evelyn in his Kalendarium Hortense spelled it tuber-rose – which makes a certain sense because it grows from a tuber (actually a rhizome, but whatever) and smells as wonderful as a rose.

Many of the misspellings entered into our website’s search-box are mundane ones such as tube rose, tuberosas, tuberrosa, tuperose, toberose, and tuberus.

Others are more entertaining, though, such as tubarose (with really big flowers?), tiberose (a Roman form?), tubrose (best in containers?), tuberoe (less expensive than tubecaviar?), and my favorite, turborose, which perfectly expresses the flower’s high-powered fragrance.

Although little known today, Colette (1873-1954) was the highly regarded French author of some 50 novels, many of them considered scandalously sensual at the time.

Her 1948 book For an Herbarium focused on the sensual delights of flowers. In the chapter titled “The Gardenia’s Monologue,” that famously fragrant flower scorns jasmine, nicotiana, magnolia, and other scented rivals before finally making this confession:

“I put up with all of these humbler bearers of nocturnal balms, certain that I have no rivals, save one, I confess . . . before whom at times I do worse than confess: I abdicate.

“On certain meridional nights heavy with the promise of rain, certain afternoons rumbling with casual thunder, then my ineffable rival need only show herself, and for all the gardenia in me, I weaken, I bow down before the tuberose.”

To savor the sublime fragrance that inspired Colette, order your single or double tuberoses now for April delivery.

(And thanks to Toni Russo of Solon, Iowa, for sharing this wonderful essay with us!)

Here’s a cool idea I stumbled upon recently in a 1957 book called Bulb Growing for Everyone.

I’d seen images like this one in catalogs from the late 1800s and early 1900s, but since all sorts of implausible things are pictured in catalogs old and new, I never gave it much thought. But the well-known Dutch bulb-grower Johan Frederik Christiaan Dix explains how it’s done:

“The receptacles in which we place [crocus] must not be so deep as those required for other bulbs, and they require far more attention insofar that a more gradual transition from a dark, cool place to a light, heated room is necessary.

“They should not be taken out into the light until the noses are fully two inches long and . . . they must on no account be brought into a hot temperature, otherwise the bulbs will shrivel up. So keep them cool until the buds rise from among the leaves. This is the moment to bring them into the room or onto a warm windowsill.

‘Vanguard’ crocus

“Most crocuses cannot be expected to flower before the end of January. . . . There is one exception, however, the crocus ‘Vanguard’ which begins to flower as early as New Year’s Day, and even at Christmas.”

We plan to give it a try – with ‘Vanguard’, of course. We’ll start the bulbs as soon as possible because they need months to root and grow, and we’ll store them in the refrigerator to make sure they stay below 48° but above freezing. If you try it, too, please let us know how it goes!

If you’d rather force something easier – from fragrant hyacinths to snake’s-head fritillaries – see our complete how-to at OldHouseGardens.com/ForcingBulbs.

One of the bulbs I’m most proud of helping to preserve and share with gardeners across the country is our true, American-grown, zone-6 hardy Byzantine gladiolus. It’s both spectacular and very hard to find, as our good customer Sharon Beasley of Newcastle, Oklahoma, pointed out recently on Facebook:

“My most exciting purchase is your Byzantine glads. I saw them in a garden years ago and bought some back then [from another source] that turned out to be the weeny ones. They are cute, but once you have seen the real thing, they don’t seem wonderful at all. I finally ordered some from you last fall and got the real beauties. They bloomed this spring and I am so happy I ordered them.

“I don’t think I’ve seen another catalog that carries the big ones. I think the price gives away whether they are the weeny ones or the real thing. Thank you!”

Since Byzantines are FALL-planted only, now is the time to order yours and make yourself happy like Sharon!

Along with an excellent article about the Hortus Bulborum, the October issue of Gardens Illustrated (#226) includes bulb recommendations from UK garden celebrities in an article titled “Designers’ Favorite Bulbs.”

silver bells, Ornithogalum nutans

Famed garden writer Mary Keen recommends fragrant ‘General de Wet’ tulip, “hard to find” Tulipa clusiana, and ‘Trevithian’ daffodil which is not only “scented and good for picking” but also “lasts longer than most in the garden.”

Rosemary Alexander of the English Gardening School recommends “showy, long-lived” winter aconite, “timeless and elegant” ‘Thalia’ daffodil, and — at the top of her list — silver bells (Ornithogalum nutans). “With silvery, gray-green, bluebell-like flowers,” she writes, “it is subtle and beloved by flower arrangers as it lasts well when picked. Best in well-drained, light shade. Great among ferns.”

And Tom Stuart-Smith, whose current projects include “restoring an Islamic garden in Marrakech,” recommends “subtle” ‘Vanguard’ crocus – “for sheer impact it is superb,” he says – and pricey ‘S. Arnott’ snowdrop. “I am not a collector,” he writes, “and for the most part I am completely happy with . . . humble Galanthus nivalis . . . but I have bought about 20 ‘S. Arnott’ every year for the past ten years and am beginning to think it’s really worth it. So much substance combined with grace.”

‘General de Wet’ tulip

‘ Vanguard’ crocus

‘S. Arnott’ snowdrop

Every year since 2001, Seattle’s Elisabeth C. Miller Botanical Garden has released an annual list of Great Plant Picks. Although especially well-suited to gardens in the Pacific Northwest, many of these plants are also outstanding choices for gardens across the country.

Butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds are the focus of this year’s GPP list, and Rick Peterson provides an excellent introduction to it in Pacific Horticulture.

“As temperatures warm, bees emerge from their winter slumber looking for nourishment,” Peterson writes, and since “crocus are among the garden’s earliest blooming bulbs,” the GPP list includes several such as C. tommasinianus, ‘Jeanne d’Arc’, ‘King of the Striped’, and ‘Mammoth Yellow’.

A few species tulips are also recommended, including T. clusiana and T. sylvestris which will have bees “bustling around the garden with satisfaction” and, in the right spot, will “reliably return year after year.”

Other Great Plant Picks that we’re offering now for delivery this fall include: extra early-blooming winter aconite, traditional snowdrop, and giant snowdrop, wildflowery Grecian windflower, ‘Gravetye Giant’ snowflake, and sowbread cyclamen, classic ‘Saint Keverne’, ‘Thalia’, and pheasant’s-eye daffodils, and elegant martagon and regal lilies.

Learn more and see the entire list organized into categories such as “Fantastic Foliage,” “Made in the Shade,” and “Plants that Make Scents” at greatplantpicks.org/plantlists/search.

Crocus tommasinianus

martagon lily

‘Thalia’ daffodil

Vanessa Elms lives in a charming little 1920s bungalow in the Depot Town neighborhood of nearby Ypsilanti (the Brooklyn of Ann Arbor). She traces her love of plants to tagging along with her parents to local nurseries when she was a child, and after earning a horticulture degree from Michigan State and spending a few years working for a landscape company in Chicago, she returned here a few years ago to join us as our VP for Bulbs.

When I asked her to recommend ONE of her favorite spring-planted bulbs, Vanessa gave me three instead:

‘Mexican Single’ tuberose – “Every year I grow these in clay pots near my living room windows, and their fragrance drifts in nicely on warm summer nights. They’re also a favorite of the hawk moths that visit my garden in the early evening.

‘George Davison’ crocosmia – “Last summer I planted these with some other plants that attract hummingbirds, and they were a big hit. They can be slow to sprout – I actually started to plant annuals over mine because I was sure they weren’t coming up – but they’re definitely worth the wait.

‘Prince Noir’ dahlia – “My all time favorite dahlia! I especially love the contrast of these dark-petaled flowers in a simple white vase.”

‘George Davison’ crocosmia, 1902

‘Prince Noir’ dahlia, 1954

Always the first bulb to bloom here in our zone-6a garden, winter aconites are thrilling, cheery, and carefree — so why aren’t more people growing them?

Although their tiny tubers can be hard to get established, our good friend Margaret Roach writes this week at her wildly popular A Way to Garden blog, “Good news: Buying waxed tubers from a vendor like Old House Gardens helps. I had virtually 100 percent success with their waxed tubers — a dramatic difference from any other time I’d tried to establish a new colony.”

Read more tips and see Margaret’s inspiring photos of these easy beauties in her garden at awaytogarden.com/hot-plants-winter-aconite/.

In 1820 when it was listed in America’s very first bulb catalog, Indian turnip was the common name for the striking native plant that most of us today call jack-in-the-pulpit. Although its raw corms are poisonous, Native Americans learned to neutralize the poison by roasting or drying them for six months, after which they could be peeled and ground into a flour for making bread.

Jack-in-the-pulpit and Indian turnip are just two of this intriguing plant’s many names which include (so the internet says) Iroquois breadroot, starchwort, pepper turnip, bog onion, dragonroot, memory root, Indian cherries (for its red fruit), Indian cradle, brown dragon (to distinguish it from its native cousin, green dragon), petit precheur (in Quebec), aronskelk (in Dutch-settled areas), tuckahoe, cooter-wampee, wake robin (a name more often applied to trillium), Adam’s apple, devil’s ear, cobra lily, and — from its Old World cousin Arum maculatum — cuckoopint and lords-and-ladies.

And here’s another fascinating tidbit: jack-in-the-pulpit can change from male to female and back again. When they’re smaller, plants are generally male, but when environmental conditions are favorable and they grow large enough, they become female, producing seeds in a cluster of bright red berries. The year after fruiting or when conditions are challenging, plants often change back to male until they can build up the strength to set seed again.

This multi-talented native bulb is easy to grow in light shade, and you can order it now for fall planting.

Spanish bluebells are great. Also known as squill in the South, they’re tough enough to bloom and naturalize just about anywhere.

But if it’s English bluebells you’re looking for – the iconic wildflower of British woodlands – you’ll need to know how to tell them apart, because counterfeits are ubiquitous.

As head gardener Quentin Stark explains in the May 2015 issue of The English Garden, English bluebells are “a wonderful rich blue. The flowers are tubular and grow on just one side of the stem” – which you can clearly see in this accompanying photo – “and they have an amazing scent. Spanish bluebells are taller, with paler blue, more open flowers, have no scent, and the flowers grow all the way around the stem, making the plant more upright.”

Our true English bluebells are the real deal. They come to us from a small nursery in Wales where they’re native, and you can order yours now for fall planting at last fall’s prices.

“Well, here’s a cool thing,” our good customer Nancy McDonald emailed us last March. Nancy gardens in zone-5a Grand Marais, Michigan, a mile from Lake Superior, where the annual snowfall averages over 11 feet (yes, 11 feet!).

“Three days ago my snowdrops were covered with more than a foot of snow. Two days ago the snow melted. Yesterday they had little green and white spears sticking up. Today the stems are long enough that the buds are starting to hang over. If it’s warm enough tomorrow, I bet some of them will open. That’s zero to sixty in only three days. Incredible!”

To speed your spring with snowdrops, order yours now!

Our good customer Amy Reynolds of Saint Louis, Missouri, emailed us this helpful tip:

“Your lily bulbs are fabulous! I popped them in the ground immediately. To protect them from an abundant local rodent population, I’ve planted them (as I always do with lilies) with several allium companions. I’ve found that squirrels and chipmunks won’t excavate past the alliums to get to nearby lily bulbs while they’re dormant, and the rabbits won’t go near allium foliage come spring.”

To try this yourself, why not order a few of our fabulous lilies and alliums right now?

Thanks to all of you who responded to our query about growing pink surprise lilies, Lycoris squamigera, outside of the narrow range we’d been recommending for them. You gave us lots of great feedback, and here’s the short version of what we learned.

ZONES – Many readers told us they’ve had long-term success with surprise lilies in zones 5b and 8a, and for the past couple of years we’ve been getting our bulbs from a third-generation bulb farm in 8a, so we’ve now expanded our zone recommendations to include zones 5b-8a(8bWC).

SOIL – Although well-drained soils are usually recommended for surprise lilies, several readers say theirs grow just fine in clay soil. Clay is dense, though, which makes it harder for bulbs to multiply, and it holds water longer which can cause bulbs to rot.

WATER – Many readers say they never water their surprise lilies, and that may be a good thing. Like most bulbs, they do best when they’re relatively dry during their summer dormancy. Since many of us water our gardens then, this could be one reason they’re often found surviving in lawns and “neglected” areas that get less watering – though of course they do need water when they’re not dormant, from fall through the end of spring.

SUN/SHADE – Full sun seems to suit them best, especially the further north they’re planted. But many of our readers said they do well in partial shade, too, especially if it’s from deciduous trees which leaf out later.

PLANTING DEPTH – Some authorities say to plant them with the neck just under the soil surface, but our expert North Carolina grower recommends planting them so they’re covered with 2-4 inches of soil. Since the bulbs we ship are 3-4 inches tall, that means planting them with the base 5-8 inches deep.

LONG WAIT FOR BLOOM – If you dig them from a neighbor’s yard you probably won’t have this problem, but if you plant dry, dormant bulbs you’ll have to be patient. Although most will put up leaves their first spring, sometimes nothing emerges until the spring after that, and they virtually never bloom until their second or even third year.

Thanks again to everyone who helped us “crowd-source” this article! For the longer version, including quotes from customers growing them everywhere from zone-3 Saskatchewan to zone-9 Florida, see our More About Surprise Lilies page.

When voles ate bulbs intended for a study on deer-resistance, Cornell University’s Bill Miller made the best of it. In the fall, Miller had potted up the bulbs and put them into cold storage. Unfortunately in spring he discovered that “during the winter, prairie voles had taken up residence in the stacks of crates and had eaten more than 35% of the bulbs. We found two large nests of voles, and the youngsters were quite happy, well fed, and growing fast from their nutritious meals. . . . Of course we were not happy with this, but we used it as an opportunity to learn some things about vole feeding and flower bulbs.” The voles’ favorite bulbs included tulips, crocus, Anemone blanda, and Chionodoxa luciliae, but they avoided those listed below. Deer would, too, Miller points out, since deer and voles are known to have similar tastes.

Hyacinths – “Bulbs were not attacked and shoots were perfect when uncovered. . . . From this we can conclude that hyacinths are pretty immune to attack from voles, and my own experience suggests that deer usually leave hyacinths alone.”

Daffodils – “Voles dug in about 10% of the pots but did not damage the bulb or emerging shoots” – and most gardeners know that daffodils are reliably deer-resistant.

Other bulbs that “experienced little or no damage” included snowdrops, snowflakes, cyclamen, trout lilies, and crown imperial. Others that were “injured but not destroyed” included alliums such as Allium sphaerocephalum (10% damage), winter aconite, and Siberian squill.

Every summer we decorate our front porch with pots of fragrant tuberoses and little pink rain lilies, while out in the back yard we tuck pots of glads in among the perennials to provide exclamation points of color.

You can, too! Most spring-planted bulbs are easy to grow in containers, and you’ll find everything you need to know at our newly expanded “Bulbs in Pots” page.

Read it now and get ready for a summer filled with beauty, fragrance, and fun.

Woo-hoo!

One of our favorite garden magazines, Fine Gardening, just published an article they asked Scott to write about one of our greatest treasures, TRUE Byzantine glads.

It’s in the August issue, on newstands now, or you can read it all here.

Wesley Greene, Williamsburg’s lead-interpreter for heirloom plants, wrote us a while ago in praise of one of our most popular heirlooms, tuberoses:

“What is amazing to me is how well known the tuberose is in the 18th century, and how little known in the 21st. It is mentioned frequently in the correspondence between John Custis of Williamsburg and Peter Collinson of London.

“A 1736 letter from Collinson reads: ‘It gives Mee great pleasure that the Tuberoses proved a new Acquisition to your Garden. I [am surprised] you had them not, when they are on both sides of you in south Carolina & Pensilvania. My friend [colonial botanist John Bartram] from Last place writt Mee he had last yeare 149 flowers on one single Flower Stalk which is very Extriordinary, but I have heard the Like from Carolina where they Stand in the Ground and Increase amazeingly.’”

Wesley went on to say, “I did not realize at first how much more fragrant they were in the evening, because I am home by then. One of our visitors from Mexico told me, so one night when I had to stay late I walked back to the garden about 7:30 and the fragrance was nearly over-powering!”

To enjoy that lush fragrance yourself, order a few to plant this spring.