I Wasn’t Going to Bulb Up the Yard, but…

September 1st, 2020

   Now that I’m into the run-out-of-gas years, I wasn’t planning to plant a lot of spring-flowering bulbs in my new Pittsburgh-area yard.

I used to have whole beds full of bulbs at my Cumberland County house.

   It’s a lot of work, the bulbs cost money that I already spent on brick repairs and a roof, and then there are those dreaded deer that turn beauty into dinner.

   It turns out that I can’t do without them. The bulbs, that is, not the deer.

   My order is in with two of my favorite bulb companies for 300 bulbs. They’ll be here in October. The bulbs, that is, not the companies.

   I had bulbs everywhere in my Cumberland County yard.

   I planted thousands of them over the years. Except for the tulips and some of the hyacinths, most came back to flower year after year.

   It got to the point where the whole yard was full of color early each spring, even before the “real” landscape of trees, flowering shrubs, perennials, and annuals got started.

   I missed that this spring. Yeah, I planted 150 yellow daffodils out front last fall, but other than that, not much was happening in the yard until late May.

   That made me realize just how much bulbs contribute to the spring landscape. No other group of plants gives that much color and variety that early in the season.

   Rather than go hog-wild all at once, my game plan is to add spots of bulb color a little at a time.

   That’s going to both spread out the work and the cost.

   I’m not terribly worried (yet) about digging the holes. So long as I’m able to get up and down, that part is doable at 300 bulbs per fall.

Tulips are a bit costly, so I use them in key spots like the front of the house to maximize impact.

   As for the cost, a decent price for bigger bulbs like tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths is around 50 to 75 cents each. That can add up fast, though, when you’re planning on at least 25 bulbs per area.

   One of the “secrets” of a good bulb display is clustering or massing the bulbs so you end up with impact. A soldier-like line of 10 measly tulips is better than nothing, but it doesn’t give you spring glory.

   Fortunately, most bulbs are good at “perennializing,” or coming back for multiple bloom seasons… and often colonizing to boot.

   For species such as Siberian squill, snowdrops, daffodils, glory-of-the-snow, grape hyacinths, and crocuses (at least the critter-non-favorite “Tommy” types), that means your investment grows.

   The way I looked at it, that bag of 50 Hippolyta snowdrops I ordered from the Van Engelen catalog for $31.75 breaks down to less than 64 cents per bulb. That’s not too bad per plant for a perennial.

   The 100-bulb bag of Spring Beauty Siberian squill was priced at $20.75, which breaks down to less than 21 cents per bulb/plant. I figured that was worth it for an expanding mat of cobalt blue that should liven up February and early March for years to come.

   I struggled a little more with tulips, which although they’re the queen of spring color, are the leading targets of deer and burrowing rodents like voles, chipmunks, and squirrels. Even when they don’t get eaten, most tulips give you only one or two good years of bloom before they start petering out.

   To me, that means two things.

   One is that the only place I’m going to risk tulips is in the back yard, which is protected by fencing.

   Second, I’m going to limit tulips to a few key areas and consider them as annuals. At 50 to 75 cents per bulb/plant, that prices out close to the price of a six-pack of annuals selling for between $3 and $4.50 per pack.

   I’ve paid that much for annuals (ones in four-inch pots can go for that much per plant), but the difference is that tulips go about six inches apart vs. a foot apart for most annuals.

   In other words, tulip bulbs can be about four times as expensive per square foot as annual flowers (four bulbs to cover a square foot at six-inch spacing vs. one annual per square foot at one-foot spacing).

   To justify a tulip investment, I leaned toward tulip types that are best at returning more than one year.  Besides the smaller, earlier “species” tulips, these are primarily Darwin and Emperor types. I’ve had these return for three or four years before dwindling.

   The cost calculates much better if I can get that many years out of a tulip.

   On the other hand, how much is it worth it for my wife, my grandkids, and me to look out the window on a cold, dreary, early-April morning and see a cheery mass of golden-red tulips swaying in the breeze?

   With that in mind, I ordered 50 Beauty of Spring Darwin-hybrid tulips from Brent and Becky’s.

The front of Brent and Becky’s retail store in Virginia.

   I’ve known Brent and Becky Heath for years, and they not only sell great bulbs at fair prices but are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. We did a tour of their Gloucester, Va., gardens a few years ago, and Brent led a workshop in which everyone made their own take-home, summer-bulb containers. People loved it.

   Anyway, Brent and Becky say Darwin hybrids are the longest-lasting perennial tulips, a result of breeding Giant Darwin types with the Tulipa fosteriana species.

   Beauty of Spring is a gorgeous, mid-spring, creamy-yellow bloomer that has crimson edges and crimson blushing. I plan to mass it along a gray-green wooden fence that I built to screen part of a bank out back.

   I’m also ordering 25 Orange Emperor tulips for a bed out the kitchen window that has peachy David Austin roses for summer color.

   And a third mass of 25 Darwin-hybrid Pink Impression tulips will go in a flower bed right outside the kitchen door, paired with 25 fragrant Blue Jacket hyacinths. I like to use fragrant plants in high-traffic areas like that.

   The snowdrops and Siberian squill are going outside the fence in a wooded area and a terrace along the driveway. And 25 white Starlight Sensation daffodils are going around the mailbox.

   Animals usually don’t eat any of those. Usually.

   We’ll see.