Plant of the Moment

Miniature bulbs

Following on from the snowdrops, our gardens can be made bright with a myriad of small bulbs, which will spread happily in borders or naturalise in grass. The bare spaces between clumps of perennials and around deciduous shrubs, which will be covered by foliage later in the year, provide a good home for miniature daffodils, crocus, muscari and scilla.

Selected varieties of daffodils, crocus and the lovely snake’s head fritillaries will grow happily in grass, so long as you leave cutting it until June to allow their foliage to die back, feeding the bulbs for next year.

Dwarf iris and the small tulips love a summer baking, and make a beautiful addition to a gravel garden. Given deep planting and free drainage they will live for many years, and should increase over time.

And of course spring flowering bulbs are delightful in containers, perhaps on a shelf or table near the front door so that you can admire their markings and smell them without getting down on hands and knees! Move them into the garden after flowering and they should repeat next year.

We have a good range of pot-grown small bulbs in growth and flowering, and will of course have more available as dried bulbs in the autumn. The advantage of planting them now is that you can see what else is already coming up in the border.