It’s bulb-planting time at Dalston Curve Garden! Every Autumn we plant thousands of bulbs to bring colour and scent and nectar for bees in the Spring. After several weeks of planning and getting very excited about our choices, we started the first of our planting sessions with our hard-working volunteers early in September. We will continue with this marathon task every week until the end of November.
We try to have flowering bulbs popping up in the Garden every month from January until the end of May and we also fill containers for inspiration, even if you are limited to a window-box.
We wrote about some of our favourite bulbs in a previous post earlier this year but we can’t get enough of Sandra Keating’s beautiful photos, so if you are still planning to plant your own bulbs, here are more to inspire you. You can continue to plant right through until the end of November or even later, if the weather is not too cold and wet.
One of our favourites is Leucojum aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’, Summer Snowflake, which last year we planted under trees, on banks and in beds.
We loved our continuous display of Narcissi (Daffodils) every month from February until early May with varieties ‘Pipit’, ‘Tete a Tete’ ‘Thalia’ ‘Hawera’ ‘Pheasant’s Eye’ and ‘Baby Moon’ under trees, in beds and in pots, tins and boxes.
Muscari latifolium (Grape Hyancinth) is always popular with bees and every May visitors and bees love the drifts of giant purple Allium ‘Purple Sensation’.
‘Abu Hassan’ is one of our all time favourite tulips, but every year we also like to try out new varieties. We plant thousands of tulips in pots throughout November and will be sharing some of our other favourites in a blog post coming soon...!