Bulbs forever

Sunset, Oct, 1994 by Jim McCausland, Lauren Bonar Swezey

Plant them now and these naturalizers will brighten your garden winter into summer...year after year.

You planted them on a fall day several years ago, and every winter they take you by surprise: almost overnight, fat green spears push up out of the ground and into the cold air. A few weeks later, your first bulbs are in bloom, and the progression of color--from crocus to daffodils to lilies--continues into summer.

Call them naturalizers or perennializers: these are the bulbs that do so well they keep coming back year after year. Some even multiply. Most of them succeed because they're made for the West's wet-winter, dry-summer climate. They shoot up when rainfall is abundant, then go dormant when summer drought reaches its peak.

To find the best performers for fall planting, we talked to gardeners and growers all over the West. Pick the right bulbs for your area, and they should brighten your garden for years to come.

Along with naturalizing, consider the other merits of bulbs: they're easy to plant, relatively pest-free, and come in an amazing array of flower forms, colors, and heights. With bloom times ranging from late winter into summer, bulbs can give you a carefree pageant of color that lasts more than half the year.

The landscaper's dilemma

Bulbs look best when their flowers are massed in plain sight. They look worst when their dying foliage is massed in plain sight. But if you cut back the foliage before it fades, you cut back the life of the bulb. Here are four landscaping solutions that show off bulbs to best advantage and encourage naturalizing:

Overseed bulbs with annuals. Use tall, lacy-leafed summer annuals such as cosmos and baby's breath. They'll conceal declining foliage without blocking the light it needs. Avoid types that need abundant summer irrigation, which is bad for dormant flower bulbs. When you dig bulbs to divide them (every third July), you'll need to tear out the annuals too.

Overplant with ground covers. We've seen daffodils push up through English ivy year after year, though in the long run, aggressive ground covers win the survival contest. Innumerable Western pastures are studded with daffodils, and many Northwest lawns sport colorful spots of crocus. To keep bulbs healthy, plant swaths you can mow around until foliage dies down. Bear in mind that ground covers make bulb division a bleak prospect.

Plant clusters in flower beds. Even small groups of bulbs provide impressive spot color. Eleanor Christensen, of West Shore Acres Bulb Farm in Washington, recommends planting bulbs in a kidney-shaped pattern. "It's so adaptable: you can stretch it out or wrap it around other flowers, perennials, or small shrubs, and you can do it with almost any number of bulbs." The only caveat is to dig bulbs every three years or so, as much to clear away invading roots as to divide the bulbs.

Naturalize in mulched earth. Nursey owner Dianne Bell planted 10,000 daffodil bulbs on a conifer-shaded hill. "On the first day, I dug holes and spaced bulbs 6 inches apart, sprinkled in bulb starter, and set each bulb top up. I was less precise the second day. By the third day, I was flinging bushels of bulbs over the hillside, dragging soil and mulch over them, and not even thinking about fertilizer. The amazing thing is that, five years later, I can't tell the difference between the beds I planted the first day and those I planted the third."

Covering bulbs with mulch improves soil, keeps down weeds, retains moisture, and lends a natural effect well suited to a relaxed landscape; the warmer the climate, the thicker the mulch should be.

Best bets for naturalizing

More important than how you plant is what you plant. The following are good naturalizers in all or most of the West, and they're readily available this month in nurseries and through catalogs. Bloom times are approximate: expect earlier bloom in Southern California and the low desert, later in northern and high-elevation areas.

Scilla or Bluebells (Endymion)

There are two groups called bluebells or scilla. Spanish bluebells (E. hispanicus) come mostly in blue (though there are white, pink, and rose forms available), grow well almost everywhere, and look like loose woodland hyacinths. Their 20-inch flower stalks rise above grassy foliage in spring.

The true scillas include Peruvian scilla (Scilla peruviana), which naturalizes along the California coast and in most of Southern California, and Siberian squill (S. siberica), which naturalizes only in the Northwest and the high desert. Peruvian scilla has a full dome of blue flowers that rise to the top of 10-inch, strappy leaves in late spring. Siberian squill is low--less than 6 inches high--and has a looser stalk of spring flowers in shades of blue, white, and purplish pink. Both kinds do well in light. shade. Plant bulbs 3 to 4 inches deep and 6 inches apart.

Calla (Zantedeschia)

From Seattle to San Diego, callas are widely known and sold both as dormant rhizomes and as nursery plants. Plants do best in mild coastal climates, where they're evergreen; in colder areas, foliage dies down in winter. The rhizomes develop clumps you can divide every few years. Plant 4 to 6 inches deep and 1 to 2 feet apart to allow room for the large arrow-shaped leaves.