Small Bulbs Such at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

One of the most popular ways of growing bulbs—snowdrops, daffodils and crocuses, in particular—is to naturalize them in drifts so they spread at will. This is usually done in grass, but those bulbs preferring shady woodland conditions can be naturalized in soil under trees and shrubs. It is also possible to establish bulbs beneath a planting of ground cover like scrambling ivies.

Small bulbs such as grape hyacinths (Muscart) and scillas are often grown in rock gardens or used to make carpets of spring color beneath taller plants. Because spring-flowering bulbs die down in summer they can be used effectively with deciduous shrubs, which are bare of leaves when the bulbs are growing and flowering, or with herbaceous plants, most of which will hardly have started to grow so early in the year. Winter aconite (Eranthis), snowdrops, crocuses, scillas, chinodoxas, muscaris, and daffodils are all particularly recommended for this kind of two-tier planting, as they do not have to be lifted every year but can be left undisturbed for several years until they become overcrowded.

I planned and set out a small bulb bed (really corms and bulbs) this fall and it began to bloom within two weeks of planting—there was no long wait for roots to develop, no months of winter twilight before the flowers appeared! Yet no magic was involved. For the bulbs were six species of colchicum (Colchicum spp.), three species of the fall- ] flowering crocus (Crocus spp.), and a clump of Sternbergia lutea, all autumn-flowering plants.