Master My Garden Podcast
Master My Garden Podcast
EP290- Fill Your Spring Garden With Colour By Planting Bulbs now!! Dig, Drop, Done: Why Lazy Gardeners Love Bulbs.
Spring flowering bulbs are gardening's ultimate return on investment. Planted from September through November, these botanical powerhouses burst forth from winter's grip with waves of colour that evolve from the first snowdrops after Christmas through magnificent tulips and alliums in late May.
What sets bulbs apart from other garden plants is their remarkable ability to naturalize—multiplying year after year with zero additional effort. Plant a single daffodil bulb this autumn, and next spring you'll have your first golden trumpet. By the following year, you might have two or three flowers, and within a few seasons, a magnificent clump that can be divided to spread beauty throughout your garden.
The sheer versatility of spring bulbs makes them indispensable for gardeners of all experience levels. They thrive in sun or shade, containers or borders, under trees or naturalized in lawns. Their only nemesis is waterlogged soil, making proper drainage their sole critical requirement. Planting couldn't be simpler—just dig a hole roughly three times the bulb's depth, place it pointy-side up, and let nature handle the rest.
For container gardeners, "lasagna planting" offers extraordinary value, creating months of continuous blooms from a single pot. By layering different varieties at varying depths—typically with late-flowering alliums or tulips at the bottom, mid-season daffodils in the middle, and early crocuses near the surface—you create a self-sustaining display that evolves from February through May.
From dramatic alliums with their perfect spherical blooms to vibrant tulips, cheerful daffodils, delicate muscari, and unusual fritillaria, the diversity of spring bulbs offers something for every garden aesthetic. Whether you're seeking high-impact displays with colour-coordinated combinations or rare collector varieties with fascinating histories, autumn is the time to plan and plant.
Don't miss this opportunity to create a self-perpetuating display that delivers maximum joy when gardens need it most. The bulbs you plant today truly represent gardening's highest impact for lowest input—they're the gift that keeps on giving for years to come. Ready to transform your spring garden? Start planting now!
Listen back to EP199 with Dave & Jules from Esker Farm Daffodils
https://www.buzzsprout.com/857398/episodes/13849995
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
How's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 290 of Master my Garden podcast, and this week's episode is talking about the subject of spring flowering bulbs. Now, spring flowering bulbs for any of you new gardeners out, there are bulbs that are planted in the autumn time, you know, basically from now until the end of November, and those bulbs will flower next spring and they're the first flowers, the first kind of things that bring cheer in a new year, and they're things like snowdrop just after Christmas, following on into Crocuses and then into Daffodils, tulips and so on right up until kind of the end of May. And you know they're high impact, beautiful color, last for years and, as I've said on the podcast before, in terms of color and in terms of, you know, value for money over time. Bulbs it's very hard to beat a bulb because the majority of them naturalize, meaning that they will multiply. So you'll plant one bulb and end up with two the following year and four the next year and so on. And because they naturalize, because spread, then you can move them to other parts of the garden and so on, and so they're very, very they're great value for the impact that they give and the flower that they give at certain time, at that time of the year is probably the most welcome flower that you'll have in your garden. You know, it's after typically here in Ireland you're after your your long, typically dark kind of winter, and then these first signs of spring come with the, with the introduction of the flower from the flower bulb, and the thing about it is it's, it's, it's just so little effort.
Speaker 1:You know the, the bulbs are the simplest thing in the world to plant. You basically can't go wrong with them, they'll. The only time they will ever fail is if they're planted into waterlogged soil or growing media. You know, if you put them in a pot and they, they just get waterlogged or you don't drill holes in it, but other than that, they will grow in shade, they'll grow in sun, they'll grow in dry ground, they'll grow in every situation, as I say, except for waterlogged soil. And because of that and because of the versatility of them, they're small to plant, they're easy to plant or quick to plant, and they're just so much, so much of a high impact for low input in terms of labor. And so they're just so much, so much of a high impact for low input in terms of labor. So they're really, they're really a no brainer for people who want to get color into the garden.
Speaker 1:And I suppose, like all things in gardening, we're kind of always looking a season or two ahead or planning a season or two ahead in terms of you know what to be planting, and bulbs is no different. So if you're looking ahead to next spring and saying I'd love to have a bit of color here or a bit of color there, then now is the time to remedy that really really simply, with flower bulbs and yeah, they couldn't be more simpler they're dig a little hole, typically speaking two to three times the depth of the actual bulb itself, and that's kind of a good rule of thumb, you know. So for the likes of a daffodil, which would be quite a big bulb, you go three times the depth of that. Now they can take a bit more, but generally, as a rule of thumb for anyone, three times the depth of the actual bulb. So, for example, a crocus is a tiny little bulb and three times the depth that actual bulb. So, for example, a crocus is a tiny little bulb and three times the depth. That means you're planting it quite shallow in the ground, and the same goes for any of the bulbs. Really You're kind of looking at three times the depth. Some of them will take a little bit more than that, but that's kind of a good rule of thumb, you know. If you wanted to kind of put an overall figure on it, that's kind of a good, good rule at home.
Speaker 1:Um, the versatility of these is is huge. You know what, what you can do with them is is massive. And for any of you that you know have been visiting your garden centers, you will have started to see. You know those bulbs coming in and you know the, the array of colors, the varieties, the new varieties that kind of come on stream every year, or something different comes on stream every year Colors, different types, different flowering periods. You just have so much choice at this stage of the year and again they'll give maximum flower from very, very, very low input. So that's what you know. That's why they're they're loved so much, especially if you get a kind of a dry you know dry time through september, october, november.
Speaker 1:Then people really do take advantage of that window and and bulbs do get planted quite a lot and, as I, there is a bulb for kind of every situation, typically mixed through borders, brilliant in pots, naturalized in lawns, naturalized under trees. And you know, because of that versatility and because of the options that you have there's, you know, and pretty much every year, you could add bulbs to your garden and still, you know, and still not. It's not like anything else. You can always add and always put in more, always multiply something that you liked and it'll only bring more and more joy, you know, next spring. So any of you that are on social media, you'll have been bombarded with all the planting of the lasagna planting, I guess, of bulbs, and it's a, it's a great way of getting a lot of flour in a pot to the podcast for a long time.
Speaker 1:I prefer, personally, I prefer to keep, you know, single color or single, single types of bulbs in the same pot. But if you're going for the lasagna plant and there really is some good, some good examples of that and lasagna planting is, you know, it's taken from the name of the lasagna dish, that, the italianagna dish that we all enjoy so much, and if you think of that, it's a layered pasta dish. The planting of the bulbs in a lasagna way is the exact same thing. It's the planting in layers and those layers basically mean that you can plant two or three different types or even up to four and five different types of bulb within the same pot. Two or three different types or even up to four and five different types of bulb within the same pot, and you will get a sequence of flowering. So you'll get an early flowering and just as that's fading right through will come the next flower and you end up with flower over a long period of time from a single pot and that pot can be, you know, placed anywhere outside, on your patio, on your decking, at your front door and so on. And it's that. That's what we're seeing at the moment.
Speaker 1:Some good examples of lasagna planting. Essentially, whatever pot you're doing, make sure it's big enough, and you start off with kind of five centimeters, two inches, of growing media at the bottom of the pot, ensuring that you have drainage holes in the bottom of the pot. Ensuring that you have drainage holes in the bottom of the pot and that they are free draining. So if the if it's a really flat pot on the base, you have to make sure that the moisture is actually able to drain away out there. So you might need to get little little pot legs that lift it up a little bit, because it does need to be free draining, as you met. As I mentioned at the very start, the only place bulbs won't grow is in waterlogged soil or growing media. So that's the big thing. But some good examples of nice lasagna plantings are get your pot decent size.
Speaker 1:You're probably looking at a pot with a diameter, a circular pot in diameter, of kind of 30 centimetres as a minimum, maybe up from that as well, 30, 35, 40. They're kind of 30 centimeters as a minimum and maybe up from that as well 30, 35, 40. They're kind of the ideal sizes, but 30 centimeters would be a good one. You're typically looking for a relatively deep pot. Again, you'll be looking for something maybe 30 centimeters deep, that kind of depth, and that's to allow for this layering that we're talking about. And so, for example, you'll start off with any of these.
Speaker 1:You'll start off with your five centimeters or two inches of growing media at the bottom of the pot and then in the first one, for example, we'll layer allium bulbs down at this level, and you know alliums are fantastic they're. There's loads of really good varieties, which we'll talk about in a little while, but brilliant varieties and brilliant colors and you can get a mix of colors of of kind of deep purples and whites, and they'll be the first flower and then on top of that we're going to have our, our sorry, they're the second flower within this mix. On top of that, then we're going to have our hyacinths, and hyacinths again. They're beautiful, beautiful bulbs, again, a nice array of colours. There You'll get pinks, you'll get whites, you'll get dark purples. There's some beautiful varieties, and again we'll talk about maybe one or two of those in a little while. So your alliums go at the base. You cover that with a layer of compost, again a couple of inches of compost. Then on top of that your hyacinth bulb goes, and then you cover those hyacinth bulbs right and you fill right to within kind of an inch of the pot, of the top of the pot. Typically at that stage you might cover it over with a decorative mesh or a little horticultural grit or something like that. And then what happens is the hyacinths will pop up, they'll flower first, as I said, and then the alliums will come through later and they'll flower.
Speaker 1:You know, kind of april time. And that's where you're getting this continuity, this lasagna planting. Another good example of that is same thing same pot, roughly the same size, 30 centimeters, 30 centimeters deep. Again, you're starting with five centimeters and five centimeters or two inches of growing media at the bottom. Your first layer will be your tulips cover over to get again a couple of inches of growing media. Then you're going with your daffodils cover that over with a couple of a couple of inches of growing media and then your crocuses go on top of that and you can choose colors that work together. You can choose colors that you know complement each other as well, or or one that gives you continuity.
Speaker 1:And in that scenario of the tulips, the daffodils and the crocus, your crocus, which is the, the one at the top of the pot, that's going to flower first. The daffodil, which is in the middle, is going to flower second. So you're talking about, with the crocus, you're talking about sort of february time, then with the daffodil you're talking march into april, depending on the, on the variety or depending on whether you've mixed or single varieties, and then you're going to go into the tulips and they're going to flower last, which is going to be sort of april and may, and there, with that, you're getting good flower from early February right through to the end of May and you know there are two examples of lasagnas. There's other examples where you can use up to five varieties. You could combine all five that I mentioned there across the two pots. You could combine all of those in, you know, in one pot if you wanted to.
Speaker 1:And the. The reason I I won't say I don't like lasagna planting because they are, you know, just a great way of of really simply one planting one, you know, one, one time planting for a lot of flour, the. The reason I don't love them is that if you know, if you can envisage the, the daffodil, as that has stopped flowering, you still have this kind of foliage there and I think that kind of gets in the way a little bit and maybe distracts from the flower of the tulip that's coming up, for example. So just with that it can, if it's. If you don't get your ratios bang on, I think you can look a little bit untidy at times. So what's?
Speaker 1:Another good option is to get two nice decorative pots, to get some basic grow pots that will fit directly into that. You start off with your pot, your, your grow pot, filled with crocuses, for example, and when they're just about to hit full bloom, you pop that grow pot into your decorative pot at your door or whatever, and that will be gone over, kind of six weeks later. At that stage your daffodils will be in full flower and then you just pop out your crocuses, pop in your daffodils, that'll get its period in the sun, that'll get to be the star of the show for a little while. Then, as soon as that starts to fade, you take that out and you pop in your pot again the same size grow pot with tulips in it, and all of the time you have a fresh and different look with an individual bulb being the star of the show for that period of time. And so it's just a different, a different way of doing it.
Speaker 1:Lasagna planting is brilliant and suitable, you know, because you would need a bit of space to do the staging that I'm talking about. You'll need somewhere to have these grow pots. Sure, if you're in a small town garden or balcony or so on, then that may not be feasible. So there's always a place for all of these. But, as I say, bulbs, ideal in the in the ground, ideal in pots, and just a brilliant, brilliant way of adding colour to the garden.
Speaker 1:Now, what bulbs are we talking about at this time of the year, and you know, any of you that are on social media are going to be bombarded at the moment with ads for different people selling bulbs. You're going to be bombarded with videos about planting of bulbs and so on, and really is the simplest thing in the world to do and what falls into this category at this time of the year? I'll probably miss one or two, but we're looking at things like daffodils. We're looking at tulips, alliums, crocuses, snowdrops, and the caveat with snowdrops is, while almost all the rest of them you can plant kind of from now through to the end of, even up to the end of November, I would be saying with snowdrops they need to be planted early, very early in this window, certainly no later than, I think, kind of mid-September or thereabouts. After that, the bulbs themselves are very, very small and they don't take kindly to being sitting around for a long time. So if they were left out, say, until October, november, if you had a little pack of 10 snowdrops, the chances of all 10 of them growing will be reducing all the time. I'm not saying you won't get have success, but sometimes you won't and so they're the one that you want to get done early in the window, but other than that, all the rest of them, kind of from now through to the end of november.
Speaker 1:We're looking at um daffodils. I mentioned narcissi muscari, which is a brilliant one, slightly underrated actually, muscari is, yeah, quite underrated. Then you're looking at things like, you know, camassias, fritillaria, hyacins, and there's others that I've missed as well and the ability to mix and match, the ability to create different levels of flowering. You know, your low flowering things like Crocus and snowdrop, brittle areas just staying really low, and then your taller things like your daffs and tulips and so on. Your ability to have different levels is brilliant and, as I say, a splash of color.
Speaker 1:Now, a lot of the time they are better planted in blocks. So if you're planted out into the open the time, they are better planted in blocks. So if you're planted out into the open ground, they're better planted out into blocks. So, group planting you know, if you plant a single bulb, you're going to get potentially a single flower next year and while they will multiply for the first couple years, they're going to be, you know, a little bit underwhelming. So say, for example, if you're planting in your flower beds, your tulips and so on. You're better block planting. So planting three, four, five, six, that will block together that you will have that number of flower heads coming up in that spot next spring and that would be look much more impressive.
Speaker 1:You can get some brilliant combinations. You know there's. Alliums, for example, are really really they stand out quite a lot. And just looking at basic varieties you'll see like most shops will stock purple sensation. That's probably the most popular. Globemaster is another good one, quite a lot bigger. The flower head is a lot bigger. Gladiator again is another good one, quite a lot bigger. The, the flower head is a lot bigger. Gladiator again is another one. But they're all kind of your basic purples, that typical allium style flower. But a really good way of sort of changing the look of that so you could group them together in you know fives or sixes and you get a high impact from those.
Speaker 1:But another good way of doing it is like getting your your tall one, like, say, giganteum and allium giganteum, and that one will be, you know, a couple of foot tall. Then possibly mixing below it, mixing a purple and a white. So say, for example, you have your giganteum which will grow up to two and a half foot tall, then flowering just below it with slightly smaller flower heads, the likes of gladiator, mixed with a white, so mount everest or ping pong or some of those, and what you end up with is you end up with this kind of a staging where you have a big, tall, big tall, gigantium, huge ball, huge flower head, and then, sort of stationed underneath it, you have these smaller globes, and it's a brilliant, it's a brilliant combination and provided that ground doesn't get waterlogged, then they will continue to multiply, they will continue to thrive and you will have that flower for a long, long, long time to come in that spot. So nice way of combining them. And with tulips then as well. They're huge for high impact and a lot of people, you know, especially a lot of the open gardens, use huge amounts of tulips in order to create color teams that they're working with. So, you know, every year they they change this, or edit this, as some of them call it, and what they're looking to do is have a particular color team of tulips and if you imagine the tulips, so they're going to be coming at the end of the bulb season and they're going to be they're going to be sort of overlapping with your early flowering perennials and you get these fantastic pictures, you know, from perennial borders in kind of April or, sorry, end of April, may into June, where you have the perennials, the early season perennials starting to flower, the likes of jeans and so on, and then you have your, your tulips, which are there, mixed through them, and it's generally that kind of color combinations that the likes of open gardens are looking at, so they might have a certain color dream or whatever it is that's flowering or will be flowering at that time of the year, and they get a compatible color to go along with that within a tulip, and you can pretty much get any colour within a tulip. So if your colour team is, you know, tangerine within your flowers, then you can get a colour that matches in with that and just plant it en masse through the border and you get these really high, vibrant displays in end of April, may and June and again. But you are planting on mass and you will need to plant a lot of bulbs to get that sort of impact. But another way of doing it is to plant blocks of them through a border. So if you have a long border and you're just looking to add pops of interest through that border along the front. Maybe you you could plant sort of six to eight tulips in planting holes every few meters, mix the colors or, if you want to stick with a singular color, and combine that and multiply that up along or duplicate that up along, and it gives you these blocks of color all in one spot.
Speaker 1:Now tulips, they, over the last good few years they've become. They're less vibrant, they're less vigorous. The second year a lot of them are dying out with with different viruses as well. So you'll get you'll always get one great year out of them and then potentially the second year you might have less bulbs there, or the flowers themselves mightn't be as good, or the plants themselves might be, you know, sort of a bit warped. They don't grow as well the second year and that is down to a virus.
Speaker 1:But if you're looking to get tulips that will, I suppose, last and will be there in your garden for a long, long time to come, then you're looking for something. Like you know, the species tulips or some of the apple dorms are quite good at coming back, and they're so. They're going to come back, they're going to naturalize and again, for any of you newer gardeners, naturalize means that they'll multiply and keep duplicating themselves. So if you plant two bulbs next year, you'll have four, the following year you'll have eight, and so on, and they'll continue to increase. Now you will need to maybe split out some of those type bulbs in order to give them space over time, and that allows you to move them elsewhere in the garden. So if you want tulips for the long term, then you might have to go with species ones or the likes of the older style apple dorms.
Speaker 1:You won't have the colour choice that you will have in modern day tulips, but and they're not sometimes the species ones are quite small, but you will still get, you know, you will still get good impact from them and you'll have the longevity maybe that you wouldn't have from standard tulips. But in terms of impact, tulips really do give a fantastic impact. Along with alliums if I had to pick one, you know that gives the most impact when it's done well. I don't think anything can beat an allium when it's done well in terms of to giving that high impact. Just because the flower is is quite big, and when you have that exact same flower all at the same height, it just it's high impact and the colors are quite vibrant at that time of the year and when you're mixing the purples and the whites together, it really can catch your eye. If you are mixing purple and white, you're not going to kind of do a 50-50 mix. You won't do, you know, half white and half purple. But you might do two thirds purple and one third white and that's a better combination. It can better combination. It can look a little bit, little bit insipid if you have just half and half, so just a little bit less of the whites and other bulbs, then that we're talking about. So we're talking about crocuses, so one of the earlier flower ones through february.
Speaker 1:Brilliant for brilliant, brilliant for naturalizing, brilliant for multiplying. Uh, superb in lawns to naturalize areas of lawns. You know a lot of people will grow crocus lawns which they plant a huge amount of crocuses in and then, just for that period of time, they'll allow that to dominate the garden and they can be really high impact and really beautiful. Snowdrops is the other one I mentioned. Those. Get those planted early. If you're not, you can also plant snowdrops in the springtime and they're planted in what they call the green. So basically you buy them in a pot and they have all their green leaves on it and you're potting them in at that stage and then, after you pot them in, they'll die back into the ground and then next year they'll come back much stronger In the green. For snowdrops is a much better way of growing them, but the availability of them is less than it would be of autumn bulbs. So autumn bulbs are fine, but just do that early when it comes to snowdrops.
Speaker 1:Daffodils, then I mentioned, you know. So you have again so many, so much choice. And when we talk about some kind of more special ones and special sellers of them in a minute, but daffodils, you have so much choice. You have again different heights, different flowering periods. You know, we spoke about it before you can get daffodils to flower the earliest daffodils flowering in December. So with the correct combination you could have daffodils flowering right through from December, early December, right through till kind of May time, and that's a phenomenal period of time. Now it will. It will require several different varieties, but again you're getting you're getting such a you know, you're getting such a great length of time out of, out of that type of flower.
Speaker 1:So brilliant examples there. Then you'll have Narcissi, which are basically they look for all the world like a miniature one. And there's some phenomenally good bulbs within that, the likes of Tetetet. They're brilliant if you're on a site that's windy. Superb in pots because they're smaller. There's less leaf growth, they're a lot tidier, very, very resilient. There's less leaf growth, they're a lot tidier, very, very resilient and they multiply brilliantly and naturalize again. So narcissi are superb, tetetets, you've rip-framed winkle, you've minnow, you've jetfire. Jetfire is a beautiful one with an orange eye. So really well, strong plants, rarely any issues with them Will multiply, as I said, brilliant in pots, brilliant in borders, brilliant in rockeries or alpine type plantings. So you know loads of options there.
Speaker 1:Then another one is muscari, definitely one of the most underrated bulbs, I would say. It's so hardy, the flower is interesting. You know it looks really good. Resilient, will grow in almost any ground, but overlooked a little bit. I think it's probably overshadowed by some of the rest of them, but certainly in terms of it gives a lot. You know it looks really well.
Speaker 1:Flowers for a long period of time, and definitely one that you shouldn't overlook, should always try and include it. For me, camassias will be an important one this year. I want to get some more kind of flower into the early season meadow. So I have loads of crocuses in there, loads of bluebells in there. The bluebells, there's thousands of them there, but I'm probably not getting the effect from them because at the stage that they're flowering, the, the meadow itself and the meadow plants themselves are actually starting to kind of come up. So the, the bluebell flower, is not standing out as much as as as I would like or I would would have thought. Having said, it's a fantastic addition to meadow from the point of view of early season pollinators. They love the bluebells at that time of the year. And the crocuses that are in there are a brilliant one.
Speaker 1:I forget the name of them now, but it's something mammoth. It must be yellow mammoth. I think it's a big. It's a bigger than kind of normal crocus, which is what I wanted to get above kind of the meadow as it starts to grow, and but they're quite impactful. They're there three or four years now and they're, you know, they're multiplying and they do look quite well, um, in the meadow. But camassias will give that color just before the meadow starts to take off and they'll be tall, so they'll be able to kind of be visible within, within the meadow. So camassias, and they'll be tall so they'll be able to kind of be visible within the meadow. So Comassias is one that I'll be adding in, definitely this autumn.
Speaker 1:Another one is Fritillaria, again underrated a little bit, kind of an unusual flower. The flower itself kind of goes sideways, it always seems to be looking away from you, if that makes sense, um, but it's a really good. It's a really good and interesting little flower, so one that again probably gets overlooked a little bit, but really worthwhile including. And then hyacinths. You know, hyacinths are seen, I suppose, a little bit as you know they're more more traditional, maybe a little old-fashioned in some people's eyes, definitely. You know, if you remember back years ago you would always see them flowering at Christmas time. They were forced heisens and they were a lovely flower, that kind of associated with Christmas time. But typically they're going to be flowering in kind of February time, late January, February, into March. But they're again an underrated flower and you get such vibrant colours in them. The purples, the pinks, whites, and the colours are really, really vibrant within them. So really worth including.
Speaker 1:And most of these bulbs are available in all garden centres. They're available, as I say. You'd be bombarded with ads from all the online sellers of them, and all that at the moment, you can also buy. You know, if you don't want to go too deep into choosing certain varieties or combinations or anything, you can also buy these kind of packs which are sold as 90 days of colour or 100 days for pollinators and this kind of thing and what that is. They're basically boxes of pre-mixed bulbs. They could be crocuses, snowdrops, daffodils, tulips, muscaries all of those mixed within a singular box, and they're going to give you what know what, what it says on the 10 100 days of color or 100 days of feed for pollinators, or you know that sort of thing, and they'll typically be color, uh, color coordinated. So you'll get all the kind of a blue purple mix or you might get a pink white mix, and you know they're a good way of if you're not looking to specifically go out and choose what you want for for what position. They're a good way of, if you're not looking to specifically go out and choose what you want for for what position. They're a good way of of getting going with bulbs and they're kind of all your, you know your kind of standard bulbs that you'll see in all, in all places.
Speaker 1:You might remember back anyone that has been listening to the podcast from a long time back in episode 199, which is a good while ago, over 100 episodes ago now, so nearly two years ago, I spoke to Dave and Jules from Escort Farm Daffodils, and that's a family room business up in Northern Ireland and I suppose their business is slightly different. So a lot of their customers are daffodil collectors. So I don't know how many daffodil varieties there are in the world, but there's a huge, huge amount of them. Many of themffodil varieties there are in the world, but there's a huge, huge amount of them. Many of them have been bred here in Ireland and the UK, the US and there's, you know, collectors of these daffodils and other special bulbs all over the world. There's daffodil societies, there's daffodil competitions, know, you bring your a stem of a singular flower and you enter competitions and it's an amazing world. It's not not particularly a world that interests me in a huge way, um, but it's. It's amazing what goes on and how interested and how specific a lot of these growers are. But Dave and Jules grow all their own bulbs up in Northern Ireland.
Speaker 1:There I think could be counted down, but they have some beautiful, beautiful bulbs and these are special bulbs. These are not the ones that you're going to find mass-produced. These are not the ones that are shipped all over the world. These are special bulbs that are there's a story behind them, there's a breeder, you know, there's a gold metal behind it or there's a division that they're in within these categories and they're really, really special. And I think for me I was flicking through, flicking through their brochure earlier on again and some absolutely stunning, stunning bulbs in it, a lot of new varieties, ones that are kind of rare, and they have, you know, packs there where you can start your collection.
Speaker 1:So if you're interested in collection, in collecting daffodils and building a collection of daffodils, where you start with you know eight or ten different varieties and then you multiply and add to that over time, then that's, you know, you couldn't get better than than escarferam. But for me I was looking through it and there's some, there's some really interesting ones and a couple of couple of ones that stood out to me and ones I intend to order. There's one called nanny ann and my grandmother was ann, so to have a daffodil called nanny ann would be would be really interesting for me. There was another one called ollie's medal my dad is ollie and so and they were beautiful flowers. So they're, they're kind of nice flowers but you have that way of having a flower that connects to your garden.
Speaker 1:And you know, we've heard in the podcast so many times over the years about flowers from parents' gardens, from grandparents' gardens, or plants that remind or I suppose people can relate somebody to, and I think that's kind of a nice thing as well. When it comes to some of these special bulbs and they are special when you look at you look at the at the brochure it's fantastic. Looking through the list then there's some brilliant names and beautiful flowering, beautiful flowering daffodils. A wee cracker was one, I presume that's uh, you know, with the name wee, which is a wee cracker is wee is a sort of term of affection for something small, and I guess that was probably bred up in northern ireland, possibly scotland. Then there's another beautiful one, bobby dazzler. There's one called finn mccool, who's a historical mythological figure here in Ireland and you know there's obviously some connection there to the Giant's Causeway and so on. So there's beautiful bulbs all with stories in them and that's a different sort of different model.
Speaker 1:You know, when people are interested in collecting a lot of open gardens now are building connections, collections of snowdrops, collections of daffodils and so on. And, as I say, you can't go, you couldn't go any further or any better than escrow farm daffodils for that. So, dave and jules and that was on episode 199 I'll actually put the link to that episode in the show notes as well, so if any wanted to go back and listen to that, it's a it's a brilliant episode and it's and it's a different side to spring bulbs. It's not, as I said, the mass produced ones that you'll see everywhere and they all have their place. So just to sort of highlight that. But bulbs, I guess they're.
Speaker 1:As I said at the start, these are probably the thing that gives the most impact for the least input of effort and for that reason I think it will get most gardeners' votes. It's a huge impact over a long period of time, at a time of year when we all really need a bit of cheer and a bit of colour. That's what bulbs deliver. I think that's why they're they're so loved. A lot of the time people forget about it. Until the springtime they go oh, look at that person's tulips or that person's daffodils, they've such a brilliant color in their garden. I must do that. Well, if you want that, then now is the time.
Speaker 1:As I say, we're always kind of planning, working, looking ahead, a couple of windows, and you know there's, there's even and we'll be covering an episode on this in the coming weeks and possibly even a grow along in the coming weeks, where we, where we look at perennials and we'll grow perennials from seed that will basically be sown in the next kind of month or so and then next year we'll have flower from those and they're going to, you know. So, again, we're planning in advance. Also, looking at things at the moment, you know, looking ahead to springtime I think we need to cover an episode on this, really. But looking ahead, you're looking at things like hyacinths for spring color, and now is the time to be thinking about all of those, getting them into position, getting them into your gardens. But again, I think we'll cover another episode on that to, I suppose, get people thinking and to get people planning in advance on that.
Speaker 1:But bulbs, it's hard to look past them. They're superb. As I said a couple of times now. They're delivering probably the most impact for the least input of effort, and I think that's something that we'll all agree is worthwhile and yeah, that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening, thank you.