The Best Little Bulbs that Hardly Anybody Grows

May 4th, 2021

   Most people know tulips and daffodils. So it’s no wonder those two spring bulbs show up in a lot of yards, even though tulips are leading snack targets of deer, rabbits, and rodents and tend to go downhill after a stirring debut performance or two.

Siberian squill is my favorite of the least-used bulbs.

   A fair number of people also know and grow crocuses and hyacinths.

   But beyond those four, I think a typical yardener would be hard-pressed to name any other spring-blooming bulbs.

   From the earliest little white snowdrops that can bloom even under a February melting snow to the softball-sized purple orbs of giant alliums that lead us into summer, lots of other bulbs do well in our climate.

   Yet few people grow them, most likely because 1.) they don’t know about them, or 2.) they figure something must be difficult about them or else they would be more common.

   From what I’ve seen over the years, most of these lesser-known bulbs are reliable growers that come back year after year, often get better with age, and seldom get eaten by animals.

   They also bloom at different times as the season unfolds, making it possible to have something in color non-stop from the end of winter right through June, when the summer annual and perennial flowers take over.

   To help paint a real-life picture of what to expect, I put 10 different so-called “specialty bulbs” to the test in my new yard.

   I ordered the different types from the Colorblends and Van Engelen catalogs and planted them all last October in areas that made the most sense for each bulb’s needs and appearance.

   I purposely planted them outside of my tall back-yard fencing where the many marauding neighborhood deer would have ready access.

   Then I watched. Here’s a rundown of what happened in spring one, with the favorite performers listed in order…

My first-year Siberian squill patch.

   1.) Siberian squill (Scilla siberica). Maybe it’s the true-blue blooms that score extra points, but I’ve always been impressed with the early-spring show of these little-used four-inchers.

   I wasn’t disappointed when the 100 new bulbs of the variety ‘Spring Beauty’ began blooming the third week of March on a morning-sun bank beside the steps to my back yard.

   All of the bulbs came up, all bloomed for a good three weeks with their dime-sized, cobalt, star-shaped flowers, and none of them were damaged by deer or anything else. These gave solo color to the bed while the hydrangeas, astilbe, variegated liriope, and silver brunnera were just waking up.

   In the past, I’ve had Siberian squill fill in to make denser mats year after year. And because the foliage is so small, it dies back to the ground as surrounding perennials spread, eliminating the job of having to cut spent foliage as with bigger tulips and daffodils.

   I’d rate Siberian squill as my favorite of the specialty bulbs.

Summer snowflakes made the best surprise in my trial.

   2.) Summer snowflakes (Leucojum aestivum). These were the best surprise of the bunch. I only planted 25 of the variety ‘Gravetye Giant,’ but if this year’s performance isn’t a one-year blip, I’ll be adding more of these foot-tall April bloomers.

   I really liked the hanging bell-shaped white flowers with the tinges of green. The bloom time was good, too (more than three weeks), and deer weren’t at all interested.

   I planted my summer snowflakes in the bank on the opposite of the steps from the Siberian squill and noticed that since the two of these partially overlap flowering time, they’d make a nice interplanted pairing.

   Summer snowflakes also would look good interplanted with golden daffodils. Or planted somewhere… they’re sadly under-used.

Allium ‘Globemasters’ up close and in a bed.

   3.) Allium ‘Globemaster.’ I actually planted a couple of dozen of these two falls ago and enjoyed the softball-sized purple flowers last spring for the first time.

   All of the large bulbs came back this spring and are putting out more foliage and thumb-sized buds as they get ready for their two-foot-tall encore performance.

   I thought I’d mention them here because ‘Globemasters’ are so showy and reliable (although expensive) and because alliums in general are so under-used.

   If you’d like something even more unusual, try Allium christophii and Allium schubertii, which also have big purple flower balls but in a form that looks like they just exploded.

I liked the bloom rate of striped squill but they flopped over.

   4.) Striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides var. libanotica). These shorties look a lot like Siberian squill, except they’re white with blue striping.

   I planted 100 striped squill bulbs at the top of a terrace around a young Scarlet Fire kousa dogwood.

   These had a very high germination rate but are small enough and light enough in color that you really need a lot of them to make much of an impact… at least in the first year. They bloomed the first two weeks of April.

   The main thing I didn’t like about striped squill as much as Siberian squill was that the flowers stick up on stems just a bit higher, which makes them prone to flopping over after a rain or in wind.

   Ones I’ve grown in the past were pretty good at coming back year after year, and like Siberian squill, cleaned themselves by shriveling into the ground by early summer.

Winter aconite were first up but could stand some filling in to make a fuller display.

   5.) Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis, Cilicica group). Sometimes nicknamed “winter wolf’s bane,” winter aconite are even shorter and more compact than striped squill.

   The patch of them that I planted between a couple of oak trees looked fairly sparse even though I planted 100 of them in a four-by-four-foot area. These do spread and reportedly even seed around, so I suspect they’ll look fuller in future years.

   On the plus side, these were the first of my test bulbs to bloom – opening at the beginning of March and going for nearly three weeks.

   They also bloomed in a bright, cheery gold and didn’t get touched by deer, even though they were the only thing advertising themselves at the time.

Cammasia would be a real winner if it bloomed a little fuller and more uniformly.

   6.) Camassia (Camassia leichtinii). Native to western North America, these bulbs send up two-foot flower stalks of spiky blue flowers in mid-spring.

   I planted four six-bulb clusters of them along a white fence and aside two young ‘Green Mountain’ boxwoods. I used Colorblends’ cultivar ‘Caerulea,’ which is more of a purple-blue bloomer.

   All bulbs sent up foliage, but deer did chew a few inches off the top of the one cluster.

   The camassia flowers bloomed spottily starting in late April. I’d rate these higher if they grew and flowered more uniformly and for a little longer. Still, not bad…

Snake’s head fritillaria is a bulb that looks best up close.

   7.) Snake’s head fritillaria (Fritillaria meleagris). These win the award for the bulb most likely to draw the question, “What are those?”

   My four clusters of 25 each sent up narrow green leaves followed by wiry stems that each held a single, nodding, bell-shaped flower of an interesting burgundy-and-white checkerboard pattern. Two of the plants bloomed white.

   I wouldn’t say these were terribly showy, but they were interesting up close.

   They bloomed for about three weeks, starting at the tail end of March, and suffered no animal damage.

Some of my crown imperials flopped over.

   8.) Crown imperial (Fritillaria imperialis). These big, bold plants look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.

   The plants start out looking like a lily, but then the fat, nearly three-feet-tall flower stalks push out a bright crown of flowers with what looks like the top of a pineapple on its head.

   The variety I grew was the red-blooming ‘Rubra Maxima’ variety, but crown imperials also come in bright yellow and orange.

   These are big bulbs that are more expensive than most, so they’re the kind of thing you’d plant as a specimen or small group as opposed to a big mass.

   Crown imperials are fun plants (kids will especially like them), but some of the five that I planted decided to grow hunched over instead of straight up, which detracted from the show.

The trout lilies didn’t make much of a show the first year.

   9.) Trout lilies (Erythronium americanum). Despite these being a native woodland wildflower, I had never grown trout lilies in my home gardens.

   I planted 25 of the variety ‘Pagoda’ (which Colorblends considers to be the most reliable version) under a front-yard kousa dogwood to mimic the dappled light of its homeland.

   Twenty of the 25 bulbs came up, but only 11 of them put out decent foliage and a few yellow flowers in early April that looked a bit like small turk’s cap lilies. (The “trout” part of the name comes from the silvery mottled leaves reminiscent of trout skin.)

   A few leaves were sampled by deer, and about half of the plants that emerged had meager foliage that I’m concerned won’t be enough to recharge and strengthen the bulbs.

   Trout lilies have a reputation for taking a few years to hit peak form, so I’m hoping this is just a weak debut.

Snowdrop flowers, where are you?

   10.) Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis). The surprisingly biggest disappointment of the 10. When snowdrops are happy, they make a mass of hanging, white, bell-shaped little flowers that hug the ground while it’s still winter.

   I’ve seen them blooming as early as late January – already in flower even under the snow.

   I planted 50 of a double-petaled British-hybrid variety called ‘Hippolyta’ around an oak in a terraced bed that gets morning sun.

   A majority of them never came up, and those that did failed to flower in any meaningful way. I saw only a few of the little white bells.

   I’m not sure why these didn’t work. The winter wasn’t bad, the bed is well drained, and snowdrops are supposed to be among the most deer-resistant bulbs.

   I did interplant them with daffodils, so maybe ‘Hippolyta’ doesn’t like company.

   I’ll have to try a different variety of these in a different spot before becoming a snowdrop-denier.

Three I didn’t trial

   Three other specialty bulbs you might encounter that I didn’t trial were glory-of-the-snow, grape hyacinths, and rock garden iris.

Glory-of-the-snow make a decent display.

   I’ve grown glory-of-the-snow (formerly Chionodoxa and now considered a type of Scilla) in the past and found it to be a solid performer, up there with Siberian squill. These bloom for two to three weeks in pale pink or lavender-blue and get better with age. Definitely worth growing.

   Grape hyacinths are May bloomers that get four- to five-inch purple or lavender spikes that look like mini clusters of grapes. They’re nice massed, but the thing I don’t like about them is how they produce foliage in fall, which browns out over winter and looks ratty in spring unless you do a cleanup before the “real” growth cycle starts.

   Rock garden iris (Iris reticulata) blooms early with the crocuses and produces classic iris-shaped flowers of purple or gold on short stems of four to six inches in height. Ones I’ve grown in the past didn’t bloom for very long (less than two weeks) and tended to die out over time.