Planting & care for spring flowering bulbs

It’s a fact of life: to enjoy the glorious bulb flowers that bloom in spring – such as tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocuses and others – you have to plant them in the fall. That’s the bad news. The good news is that nothing is easier to grow or more colorfully rewarding than flower bulbs. Even the most unskilled gardener can create a breathtaking and beautiful spring garden with flower bulbs.

When to plant flower bulbs

The best time to plant flower bulbs is from September to December. Spring-flowering bulbs must be planted in the autumn because they require a sustained “dormant” period of cold temperatures to stimulate root development. The only rule is that, spring-flowering flower bulbs must be planted before the first hard frost. It’s best to plant flower bulbs as soon as possible after bringing them home. If you must store them, keep them dry and cool – between 10 and 15 degrees (°C).

Tempting Choices

In addition to tulips and daffodils, you’ll also want to plant other exotic Dutch flower bulbs, such as spring-flowering Scilla, Puschkinia, Muscari, Fritillaria, Allium, Camassia, and Eremurus. Spring-flowering flwoer bulbs offer a wide variety of colours, heights and flowering periods. Let your imagination run wild. Easy-to-grow bulbs allow you to concentrate on garden design. All you really need to learn about planning your garden is written on the package, or available from your bulb supplier. What you need to know is: the colour of the flower, which months it will bloom, how high it will grow, what month to plant, and how deep to plant.

Here are some professional planting tips

Most spring-flowering Dutch flower bulbs will thrive in either full or partial sun, but do just fine in almost any location that offers good drainage. Flower bulbs will rot in standing water so avoid areas prone to flooding, such as the bottom of hills or under drainpipes.

After choosing the site:

Dig either a trench for a bed planting, or individual holes for individual flower bulbs or small cluster of flower bulbs. To determine how deep to plant, consider the calibre or size of the flower bulb. Large flower bulbs (5 cm or more) are usually planted about 15 cm deep; smaller-size flower bulbs (2.5 cm) are planted 7-10 cm deep.

Loosen the soil with a rake to aerate it and remove any weeds and small stones. Mix in a bit of peat moss to improve soil drainage. Place – do not push – bulbs firmly in the soil with the pointed side up. Space large bulbs 7-20 cm apart and small bulbs 3-7 cm apart. (If you’re not sure which end is right side up, don’t worry. Upside-down flower bulbs usually come up anyway!)

Cover the flower bulbs with soil and water generously, if the soil is not wet yet. Add 5-7 cm of mulch, pine bark is fine, on top of the garden bed. This will provide added protection from the cold and keeps the soil from drying out.

It’s as easy as 1-2-3. By following these simple guidelines, your colourful garden is sure to turn the neighbours green with envy. Basically it all boils down to: buy those flower bulbs, put them in the ground and dream all winter of the glorious spring that awaits you.

Discover our favorite spring flower bulbs in full color.

Tulipa pulchella

Tulipa saxatilis

Tulipa tarda

Tulipa turkestanica

Tulipa urumiensis

Tulip bakeri

Peppermint Stick

Tulip eichleri

Tulipa kolpakowskiana

Tulipa linifolia

Rembrandt tulip

Triumph tulip

Tulip viridiflora

Fringed tulips

Tulip acuminata

Single early tulip

Tulip fosteriana

Tulip greigii

Tulip kaufmanniana

Lily-flowering tulip

Care and maintenance for spring flowering bulbs

Flower bulbs are low-maintenance plants. Many kinds of bulbs can even be left in the same place for years. They increase in number all by themselves by producing seeds or by spontaneously producing more flower bulbs. This process is called naturalisation. After so many years, daffodils, crocuses, winter aconites, anemones, snowdrops, squills and grape hyacinths can form an unbroken carpet of plants.

Other flower bulbs such as tulips and hyacinths will bloom profusely the first year after planting but produce fewer and fewer flowers thereafter because their bulbs gradually become exhausted. Botanical tulips, however, are an exception.

Here are some tips for enjoying your flower bulbs longer:

During a dry spring, provide late-flowering bulbs such as tulips, hyacinths, ornamental onions and irises with some water now and then.
Once the flowers have faded, snip them off.
Don’t trim off the leaves back straightaway. Instead, let the leaves and stem turn yellow (die back) first. This allows nutrients in the foliage to feed the bulb (if it is one of the kinds that naturalise) so that it can emerge again next year.
Provide flower bulbs that naturalise – such as daffodils, crocuses, squills, anemones, grape hyacinths and winter aconites – with fertiliser after they have flowered. Fertilising stimulates the formation of flower buds during the summer months.

Finished flowering?

Flower bulbs that have finished flowering?

The flowers produced by flower bulbs have made the garden sparkle with colour for weeks – they’ve made it so inviting! But now that they are finished flowering, what should you do with the flower bulbs? The sight of their flowers withering and their stems and leaves turning yellow isn’t very attractive. But is it best to cut them back now or not?

Two choices for flower bulbs that have finished flowering

Two choices for flower bulbs that have finished flowering What to do with flower bulbs that have finished flowering is entirely up to you. Would you like to enjoy the same flower bulbs again next year, and do you enjoy gardening? If so, you can store them. If you want to avoid some work and try new varieties and colours next year, you don’t have to do anything.

Storing flower bulbs for next year

People who really enjoy gardening more often choose to store the flower bulbs they lift after flowering so that they can enjoy them again next year. The most important rule to follow is to leave these flower bulbs in the ground until the foliage (stem and leaves) they produced dies back. This allows these flower bulbs to reabsorb the nutrients from the foliage so that they will have enough strength to grow and flower effectively again next year. Once both the leaves and stem have died back entirely, the flower bulbs can be removed from the ground. They can then be stored in a cardboard box placed in a cool dry location until they are planted in the ground again for next year’s growing season.