New ideas
It pays to read a lot because every book contains a few gems. That was my experience while reading Ellen Mary’s “The joy of gardening”. I will review it in a future blog post but one idea stuck with me: bulb lasagna! Anyone?
The basic idea isn’t shocking. What’s shocking is that it never occurred to me to layer different bulbs in one pot. Mostly I’ve done single bulbs like daffodils or mixed them in between other plants like winter pansies. When the bulbs pop up in spring, we remove the winter pansies even if they still look ok. Then we enjoy the new bulbs.
By far the best bulb planting I have done is with purple tulips planted around Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenussima). The light stalks of the grass nicely contrast with the purple tulips. I forget now which magazine I saw this in so I can’t give credit but it’s a brilliant idea. Try it, especially if you have more than one Mexican feather grass. See the picture below.
Lasagna
Another brilliant idea is bulb lasagna. I just had to think of what bulbs to put into my imaginary pot lasagna.
The deepest bulbs should be late blooming tulips. In the middle might be daffodils or early blooming tulips; and the top layer would have something like crocuses. Crocuses usually pop up early in the season and they’re smaller so they would be perfect for the shallow top layer.
If you use two different tulip colors, you can have some fun with it. And there’s no reason to keep doing the same thing. Change it up every season. Use different colors. After all, you wouldn’t eat the same exact lasagna recipe every time. Live a little; change things up. I’m thinking of trying one pot lasagna and reporting the results in this blog post as an addendum. Feel free to share your pictures.
We’re only a day away from September so it won’t be too much longer before bulb planting begins. Your bulbs should be planted before first frost. Have some fun with it. Bulbs are relatively inexpensive.
