GARDENING
DAVID WHEELER
MY BULB MOMENT
Ours was a modest bulb order this year: 500 Camassia quamash, 50 Erythronium ‘Pagoda’, 50 ‘Discovery’ Dutch iris and 100 Narcissi ‘Pueblo’. Wholesale cost £180.
Now the planting. It's backbreaking work, especially if the ground is dry and hard. Thankfully, some bulbs have a reasonable shelf life, but don't put off planting until Boxing Day.
Erythroniums in particular hate delay. ‘Pagoda’ is a beauty; in our previous garden, it quickly multiplied in turf, gracing open sunlit spaces in the arboretum with, as one supplier puts it, ‘elegant downward facing flowers, wing-like recurved petals and a hint of Oriental charm… over tall, upright stems [of] up to ten nodding blooms, all over a neat clump of lush green mottled foliage’.
And those flowers are of an alluring sulphur-yellow hue. They're going under the skirts of a venerable sweet chestnut to cavort with well-established drifts of primroses, snake's head fritillaries, and a scattering of chalky-white wood anemones.
Camassias proliferate at nearby Aberglasney. They give a long-lasting show of tall stems bearing an abundance of cerulean-blue flowers from mid-April onwards. Let them set and scatter seed before mowing offthe withered foliage; new flowering-sized plants will spring up as if by magic within a couple of years.
Bulbs of an appealing creamy-white camassia (C. leichtlinii ‘Alba’) cost just a few pennies more – but it's the blue that wins my favour, fabulously illuminating the season's wealth of assorted yellows. Narcissi ‘Pueblo’ was another goody that tugged at my heart strings at Aberglasney earlier this year. They, jonquillas, similarly fashioned like ‘Ice Wings’, made 15-inch-tall stands, shouldering elongated ivory-white trumpets.
Scented? Can't say – this old back of mine refused to bend. ‘Pueblo’ is said to be rabbit-proof – a gain indeed, as our ageing terriers now seldom race after such critters, preferring instead to bark boo from a comfortable nook.
Bulbs of the Dutch iris brigade come cheap as chips, cheaper still from a wholesaler. ‘Discovery’ is a discovery for me, having been seduced by internet photos of its ‘ornate flower form and upright habit … with flouncy standards and eye-catching slick of gold on the falls’.
Discovery is going into four new beds named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, where I'm building up a collection of perennial (non-bulbous) varieties. Flowering a
