BULB MASTERS
What do garden designers consider when creating combinations of spring-blooming flower bulbs, perennials and flowering trees and shrubs? Beyond the basics, what criteria do they weigh to take a combo to a higher plane of beauty? How do they balance short-term delight with long-term efficiency? How do designers script their plant partnerships so that they’ll unfold sequentially, week after week, as winter morphs into spring and spring into summer? How do they accommodate bulb foliage’s die-back where naturalizing is a goal? How do they deal with foraging animals?
The bulb experts at Colorblends thought it would be interesting to explore how some accomplished garden design professionals approach these questions.
“We reached out to three designers whose work we admire and asked if they’d be willing to share the thinking behind some of their successful spring bulb and perennial combinations. All three generously agreed,” says Tim Schipper of Colorblends, a national flower-bulb wholesaler. The company compiled what the designers shared into a website they named Bulb Design Notes (http://www.bulbdesignnotes.com).
Each designer chose five or more photos of spring bulb and perennial combinations they designed and provided design notes on each. Their photos and observations are assembled into
