Three Bulb Lessons from Keukenhof

May 10th, 2022

   The lackluster color we see (or don’t see at all) in so many yards up to this point in the growing season is largely because we’re under-bulbed.

The Netherlands’ Keukenhof garden gets a lot of color impact by planting bulbs in big masses.

   Spring blooming bulbs like tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths are the leading way to color our spring landscapes, but the majority of yards I see are totally bulbless.

   Public gardens like Hershey Gardens and Longwood and especially The Netherlands’ Keukenhof garden show us what’s possible with spring bulbs.

   I got to see Keukenhof’s 79 acres of bulbs in full glory last month – twice – as part of a pair of European tours I hosted through Lowee’s group tours and Collette vacations.

See a photo gallery of 25 pictures from the 2022 Keukenhof gardens display

  While we can’t come close to what Keukenhof does with its 7 million bulbs, the garden does offer us three key lessons on how we can at least beef up our own bulb acumen.

   Here they are:

   Plant more… and cluster them. A pack of 10 tulips lined up single-file across the house front doesn’t add up to much impact.

   Spring bulbs look best in masses — at least dozens if not hundreds.

This mass of mixed tulips gives glorious impact to the foot of this Keukenhof pond.

   If you don’t want to invest that much, at least cluster the ones you plant in groups or circles of 10 or 12 instead of spreading them out in a line.

   Bulbs are actually good investments since most of them come back year after year and increase in quantity over time. It’s really only tulips and to a lesser extent hyacinths, crocuses, and fritillaria that peter out in a few years. When you look at it that way, 50 cents a bulb is a bargain for a perennial plant.

   Planting in masses also makes it harder for animals to eat everything. Again, it’s mainly tulips that the animals really like.

Read George’s post on how to keep animals from eating your bulbs

   Mix-and-match. A lot of Keukenhof‘s display gardens showed blocks or whole beds full of just one kind of bulb. But many other beds are in interplanted blends of several different kinds of bulbs – some so mixed that the effect looks like a meadow.

Several kinds of bulbs are mixed here at Keukenhof to create a meadow look.

   One advantage of interplanting is that it spreads out the color interest as the different bulbs come into and go out of bloom according to their genetic timing.

   Another is that it offers more diversity to both wildlife and to gardeners who like a more action-packed, English-cottage-garden look vs. the formality of a one-dimensional bed.

   A bonus is that mixing and matching is a great way to take a vantage of end-of-season bulb markdowns. When stores and catalogs discount 50 percent or even 75 percent off to get rid of the season’s leftovers come late fall, you can scarf up two packs of this, three packs of that, and interplant it all for your next-spring’s bulb meadow.

   Layer. Keukenhof is a bulb-centric garden that’s open only for eight weeks of the year, but it tries to fire nonstop on all cylinders the whole time.

These ribbons of hyacinths fill a swooping Keukenhof now, but the same area was blooming in earlier, smaller bulbs earlier.

   One way it does that is by “layering” three sets of bulbs on top of one other. We can do this, too, to turn a bed into an eight-week spring garden instead of the two- to three-week show that a singular bulb planting delivers.

   Start by digging a trench about eight inches deep and setting aside the soil. Line the bottom with the biggest, latest-blooming bulbs, such as alliums, crown imperials, late daffodils, or most tulips.

   Then top that layer until the bulb tips are just covered with soil.

   Next, plant a layer of mid-sized, mid-spring bulbs, such as hyacinths, leucojum (summer snowflakes), early tulips, or most daffodils.

   Cover them with soil.

   Finally, top that with a layer of small, early-blooming bulbs, such as snowdrops, Siberian squill, glory-of-the-snow, puschkinia, or crocuses.

   Come spring, the “shorties” will bloom first, then as they fade, the middle layer will shoot up and bloom, and then as they fade, the bottom layer will emerge and bloom.

   Don’t worry. The bulb shoots will find their way up and around the bulbs above them.