Put any of these nine sleeping beauties to bed now and you’ll wake up to a burst of colour next spring. Most of the following bulbs are not as well known as they should be. Some are small and delicate, others tall and exotic looking, but all are worth a spot in your garden. Many naturalize to come back year after year, spreading if they’re happy, and most are unappealing to spring garden menaces such as deer and squirrels.

Bulb grow-how

Spring-flowering bulbs are the easiest plants to grow. The most important thing is to plant them in fall: they need a winter’s nap to perform their spring magic. Planting tips:

• Plant in late September or October when night temperatures fall to between 5°C to10°C. Don’t leave it too late—bulbs need about six weeks before the ground freezes to make root growth.
• Plant in a well-drained soil where bulbs will get full sun or at least half a day’s sun in spring. Water thoroughly.
• Plant pointed side up. Most bulbs are obvious, but some can be tricky. If you’re not sure which end is up, plant sideways. They’ll sort themselves out.
• Bulbs come ready for flowering, so you don’t have to fertilize at planting. After they’ve flowered, sprinkle a small handful of bulb food around them to supply nutrients for next year’s blooms.
• Just before the ground freezes, apply 5 to 7.5 cm of mulch (compost, wood chips or chopped up leaves). In spring, the bulbs will come up through the mulch.

Beauty in bloom For more wow impact in your spring garden, follow these planting pointers for bulbs:

• Group bulbs together: Larger groupings of one kind of bulb have more design impact than isolated loners dotted around the garden. Try to concentrate spring bulbs in the part of the garden where they’ll make the biggest visual splash. 
• Plant early bulbs close to the house: In early spring, you’re unlikely to make a chilly trip to the garden’s back corner to admire flowers, so plant early bulbs such as windflower or fritillarias close to the front steps or in a front garden bed where you can appreciate them.
• Plant in a triangular arrangement: The triangle should point toward the viewer. By planting this way, your bulb “bouquet” will look larger than if you had planted a circular or square shape. 
• Layer plantings: Use a low-growing bulb such as windflower to add a touch of bloom beneath taller daffodils or tulips or early flowering shrubs such as purple leaf sand cherry (Prunus x cistena). English bluebells can create a carpet of bloom under deciduous trees or shrubs.
• Use bulbs as gap fillers: Wild hyacinths and alliums make terrific gap fillers between the spring and summer garden seasons. Just seven to ten of these bulbs will add visual punch to a flowerbed.
• Pair bulbs with early perennials:  Emerging perennials complement spring-bloomers in the garden and provide pleasing contrasting foliage. Some early perennials such as cushion spurge (Euphorbia polychroma), lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis), heartleaf brunnera (Brunnera macrophylla), bleeding heart (Dicentra species) and the low-growing ground cover sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum) bloom with the bulbs. The foliage of daylilies (Hemerocallis), coral-bells or alum root (Heuchera species), peony and hosta also works beautifully with bulb flowers.

 A version of this article appeared in the October 2003 issue of Chatelaine magazine.