Back to blog

Planting your flower bulbs somewhere else....

Planting your flower bulbs somewhere else....

Planting your flower bulbs somewhere else.

Planting season is here! A busy and exciting time at DutchGrown. The coming weeks this blog will be giving you all the best insights, tips and information to ensure you get the best results come spring.

Ready to plant

Fall is well and truly here. The leaves in your garden have turned, and might already be falling down, coloring your lawn with their jewel tones. The days are getting shorter and all around you nature is withdrawing into itself, getting ready for winter. This is the perfect time to put on your gardening clothes, get out your gloves and your trowel and start planting your bulbs.

Year in year out

As you make your way over to your trusted flowerbeds and faithful pots, in your mind you go over which bulbs would best fit where. You love gardening and puttering around with your tools, and the yearly return of your bulb planting ritual feels very soothing and comfortable. But also maybe a bit…same-y? Tulips in this bed, narcissus in those pots… you know the effect will be great, but maybe it’s also getting a tad…predictable?

Time for a change

Perhaps it’s time to shake tings up a little, to do something different. You can start small but no one is stopping you from going for a more radical approach. Below I have collected some great ideas and suggestions that will help you breathe new life into your planting approach, so that next spring will truly be about growth and renewal, not only of your flower bulbs, but also of your garden design!

Plant Flower Bulbs the Different Way

Where?

First, let’s talk location. Like all good gardeners you have chosen a well-drained spot for your bulbs, with abundant sunlight. This mostly comes down to flowerbeds on the edge of your lawn or alongside garden paths. However, your garden has so much more bulb-potential...

Grass

Take your lawn for example, instead of planting bulbs next to it, why not plant them in it? This works especially well for short, earlier flowers like chionodoxa, muscari and puschkinia, as they bloom before you’ll need to mow your lawn. You can plant them in little groups, so they will form islands of color, or you can go wild and scatter them around you, and plant them where they land.

If you have a spot in your garden where the grass grows very tall in summer, you can turn it into a fantastically colorful meadow by planting tall, later flowering varieties like alliums or camassia.

Flower Bulbs by DutchGrown

Shade

Not all bulbs will thrive in full shade, but there are quite a few that will still do very well when you plant them under deciduous trees. This works especially well for the earlier flowers, as more than enough sun will come through the branches before the trees come into full leaf. Good choices here would be early tulips, crocus, snow drops and early daffodils. Once leaves start appearing on the trees spanish bluebells will grow happily in the dappled shade as well.

Containers

There’s nothing wrong with your terracotta pots. They look classy in your garden and they make it easy to keep soil well-drained. But there are so much more fun things out there in which to plant your flower bulbs. Why not use old baskets? Or a funky teapot you found at a second-hand shop? (Or a whole group of teapots?). Those wooden boxes in which wine bottles sometimes come? Those cute tin boxes that are just lying around in your attic? You could go even further and plant tulips in a pair of rubber boots, or plant a group of fragrant hyacinths in an old suitcase or a burlap sack.

Flower Bulbs by DutchGrown

Here, there and everywhere…

As long as you make sure the soil is well drained and there is enough sunlight to keep your flower bulbs happy, the sky is the limit when it comes to where to plant them. Go over to our website today, and choose the flowers you would like to see anywhere and everywhere in your garden next spring!

Meet Ben, our Flower Bulb Specialist
Meet Ben, our Flower Bulb Specialist

Gardening challenges?

Send me your questions! or read more about me.