Flower bulbs in the garden

Bluebonnets in Texas.

I like your name.

550 bulbs total? That was one hell of a time commitment.

I planted bulbs and RATS ate them. Not one damn tulip. Never again.

OP, did you order you bulbs online or buy them locally?

The grape hyacinths will last forever and multiply until they have swallowed up your house. The daffodils, on the other hand, will all be gone within 5 years. Half will fail to emerge this spring, and the rest will die slow lingering deaths over the remaining 5 years. Where I live, certain tulips live forever, and the squirrels kindly dig them up and plant them everywhere. I have never planted one, and my backyard "wild garden" is overrun with them every spring. Red, yellow, and orange. The fancier colors with extra tall stems or exotic colors or fringed petals will die out after 2-3 years. In my experience, daffodils are not nearly as permanent as the brochures always promise. There is this though:

Very pretty, OP. I've planted Amaryllis before down here in Houston. They naturalize, coming back year after year without any attention. My grandmother always planted bearded irises in her sideyard, which I loved. She was a great gardener.

I'm in an apartment now, so I'm sticking to annuals I grow from seed out on the balcony.

R4, I ordered my bulbs from Van Engelen.

Thanks, OP — nice website. I like all the specific search features.

Van Engelen is who Martha Stewart uses for her Spring bulbs, so I thought the quality must be very high. We'll see soon enough!

I bought these Florentine Silk irises from Lowe’s - cheap and glorious. When they bloom in early spring, it looks like I actually know what I am doing in the garden :)

Irises are next for me, R10! I was just looking at varieties last night online. I didn't realize, though, that they're best planted in late Summer/early Fall, so I marked my calendar for the summer to buy my rhizomes.

R11, iris is the most forgiving.

If you can give them a shallow bed and good sun, try them out.

Please remember to segregate the purple. It plays with hybrids because it’s extra slutty.

Surprise Lilies. My mother's yard has them and I remember as a kid I just thought the stalks/foliage that came up in Spring were just old, non-productive daffodils. Then in August would be the pale pink flowers. It took me decades to realize it was the same plant!

In the South, no yard is complete without some spider lily bulbs suddenly bursting forth every Fall:

Glad you love flowers like I do. You're making the world a more beautiful place.

This Fall I planted more Tulip bulbs (my favorite flower) in my gardens like I do every year. But I have to cover them up so that the squirrels don't dig them up and carry them away.

RE: tulips, for me I prefer color massing versus speckled variety. I know it sounds "corporate" but just the way I prefer them. Like the fields in Netherlands at bloom time

I grew up near a huge lot where three old mansions had been torn down, and just left abandoned for years. Wild irises were everywhere, or maybe they were planted many years before the homes were abandoned, but they were everywhere year after year. It made me think they didn't need much tending to thrive. To me they are the most beautiful flower.

I'm a fan of species Tulips. Less steroidal and they bloom for years in well drained soil. I use mine at the edges of gravel paths/small accents

Over the years, I've planted daffodils in my front and back gardens. I planted crocuses, but the flowers are eaten by deer or rabbits. I've also planted alliums, but either the soil was too wet (soggy part of the yard), or voles have eaten the bulbs. This year, I got more allium bulbs, and decided to try a bulb basket.. to protect from voles . I have a very large planter, which I planted daffodil bulbs. The daffodils are successful.. no problem, the other bulbs not so much. I keep trying.

R14, that's a great idea. I live in the South and will order some red spider lilies immediately!

For you, r21:

I already ordered some, R22! I wasn't joking about "immediately". :)

r23 -- OIC

Some daffodils that my grandparents planted about 120 years ago have naturalized an entire hillside facing the old house so the area must suit them. This is on a ranch in southern BC. Deer will eat every grape hyacinth, tulip and crocus in my garden on the west coast of Canada but daffodils and allium are left alone. To protect freshly planted bulbs I sprinkle cayenne pepper which keeps the squirrels away. Sometimes use chicken wire to lay over new bulbs and under the earth.

One year I thought I'd naturalize some bulbs in my front parking strip. In late October I got out the bulb digger and down went crocus and glory of the snow (Chionodoxa), tulips, etc. The squirrels were right behind be trying to dig up every bulb. I heard that moth balls would confuse/deter them, so I laid some down. Eventually we had cold weather and the ground froze so all was good. Come spring and the foliage started to come up. In late February/early March the crocus started to bloom, and again the squirrels would come along and eat the newly opening flowers. So I laid down chicken wire over each patch of bulbs. It was my own little crocus Auschwitz and about as attractive. I had to snatch a nasty smelling moth ball out of a passing school child's mouth who thought they were easter eggs!. Then one bright sunny day, I had a friend visiting my second story living room and I was telling her the sad story of my bulbs, which by now were half done, but still pretty glorious. Along came another school child and without a thought that anyone might object, she began picking every last flower. As my friend and I started laughing, she heard us through the window, and dashed off, flinging her (my) bouquet hither and yon in her haste.

Great story, R26. It reminds me of a time when my little friend and I decided to have a Luau in my kiddie pool, and picked every flower off my mother's roses, petunias and other plans and floated them in the kiddie pool. We of course didn't know or care that she had a wedding shower scheduled at our house that coming weekend and had planted the flowers so they'd look pretty for the shower. Alas, that did not come to pass for her.

A lot of my daffodils are duds. They have strong, beautiful, healthy stems & leaves but don’t flower.

I never planted tulips because I heard from others that squirrels and rodents love them & eat them up like candy.

I have grape hyacinths and they kind of annoy me. They have ugly leaves starting about October that get all snarled & knotty over the winter and they don’t flower the same time as the daffodils. The small blooms don’t make up for the messy ground leaves.

I was going to plant allium near my swamp milkweed to deter aphids, but by the time I received them, the ground was frozen.

Upstate New York. A good climate for bulbs. Snowdrops always come up first in late winter/early spring. A trick is to mix up different varieties of early, mid-summer, and late blooming tulips, so you have a longer display..

What are some other more unusual bulbs that are easy to grow, like spider lilies?

Look for Oxblood Lilies, r20

Indestructible.

Thank you R31. They are beautiful (googled it).

I think oxblood lilies are a southern bulb, zones 7 to 10. They wouldn't work in northern states.. like NJ. My zone is 6a or 6b. Daffodils do very well here.

Read this r33

Tulips in Northern Illinois.

Canna lilies are common in Houston. Nice foliage and flaming flowers. And the squirrels will sit on the foliage and eat the blossoms, the little bastards.

Go nuts:

Nice, R37!

Gladioli are easy to grow (in Southern California).

Stock flowers are also easy to grow from seeds (Southern California).

In you guys' experience, do deer like lilies?

Deer are supposed to like lilies but I've got friends in a deer-heavy area that grow lilies every year and have never had an issue. I was told by one gardener that just because deer, in general, like something doesn't mean that your local deer population might not prefer something else. For a couple of years deer ate my daffodils instead of ignoring them like they usually do. And have left them alone since.

I have Happy Returns lilies. They’re supposed to rebook, but it’s nothing like the first bloom when you have all the lilies blooming at the same time. The first bloom is very nice. They bloomed and the next day I went out and every single bloom was gone. This is how I doubt out I had deer. They on,u came very late a night, so I’d never seen them before.

Now they hand out on my property all winter long while the hunters shoot the deer in the nearby fields. Today I noticed one is wearing a collar. I guess it’s being tracked for some reason.

I am sorry for my typos. I had a couple of coughing fits while posting.

[quote]In you guys' experience, do deer like lilies?

In my experience, yes. I planted 5 or 6 this year and when the flowers finally opened, deer came along and chomped them.

The deer have not touched my daffodils or iris. Some varieties of irises are sold as "reblooming," meaning they bloom in the spring and then again in the fall. The fall bloom is a little weaker, though. They are more expensive, though, about $6 per rhizome, for named varieties. Irises are very easy to grow.

I used to grow the gladiolus "Priscilla" because I think it's the prettiest one. One year I bought some by mail order directly from the old man who hybridized it. He died not long after that so I didn't buy any more.

For the daffodils I ordered a half bushel (I think about 300 bulbs) from K. van Bourgondien and they were supposed to be a mixture of many different varieties but they turned out to be all the same, solid yellow.

Now I'm more interested in the Narcissus species (narcissus tazetta, etc.) which give clusters of tiny flowers, because most of them have sweet fragrances. Not the paperwhites; those have a disagreeable scent to me. But the ones that are yellow or have 2 colors are very good smelling, and bloom early when no other sweet-smelling flowers are in bloom.

Another unusual one I grew was tuberose, which aren't all that pretty, but have a sweet strong fragrance that is used heavily by the perfume industry.

Another lesser-known one I grew was puschkinia, with white and blue striped flowers.

I have also grown saffron crocus (crocus sativus) which is where saffron comes from. I grew them in pots. You get usually 3 pices of saffron from each bulb, you just pick them and let them dry. Very easy. But it takes a lot of bulbs, so that's why saffron is so expensive.

The bulbs that have naturalized well for me: Siberian Squill, Snowdrops, Grape Hyacinths, Greek Anemones, Spanish Bluebells, Italian Arum, Drooping Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum nutas). I got much of my inspiration from the huge cemetery that's a few blocks from my house. I take a notebook with me in spring, and make note of which bulbs are blooming in the grass (my favorite way to grow them). I inherited lots of "magic lilies" (that R13) posted. They're actually very common in my city (Southern Ohio). They're considered "pass-along plants), Most people get theirs from their friends or families. They're a bit expensive at first, but once you have them, they're almost indestructible. Also, even though I never planted them, my front yard has lots of tulips that my Mom planted back when I was a kid (I'm 57). They're just standard, hybrid Darwin tulips: Red Emperor and Gudoshnik are very tough varieties. I've found the common hybrids to be much tougher than the 'species tulips', which I love.

Anyway, Siberian Squill comes in different colors (blue, white or pink) but I just stick with the blue ones. There are great sheets of them at the cemetery. Grape Hyacinths don't just spread by bulbs, but if you don't remove the seedpods they'll also seed into unexpected spots. Greek Anemones also come in blue, white and pink, but I just buy the blue ones. My brothers front yard faces the street, and it has a grassy bank. I planted Greek Anemones there over 30 years ago, and the bank facing the street is covered with blooming anenomes every spring, to the point that people actually stop their cars to take photos, and to ask about them. Again, another bulb that spreads by seed, so they now show up in the parking strip across the street. Again, Spanish Bluebells come in blue, white and pink. I only plant the blue ones. My brother has huge plantings of them now that blook every spring, and I planted them at my ex's house, too. Italian Arum is an unusual plant: it's almost like a hardy caladium. The leaves come up in fall, and last all winter. They're marbled with silver and very attractive. You eventually get little calla-lily like flowers in the spring, which are followed by clusters of bright red berries. Squirrels will spread them, and soon you'll have them popping up everywhere. The drooping Star of Bethlehem gets very little mention. It's extremely subtle: white flowers with silvery green backs. I was aware of them, but never bothered with them, until I saw a stretch of lawn that looked pretty unusual from the road, and I had to get out and get up close, to finally figure what they were. My brother's front lawn is now full of them, They're even tough enough to grow under a black walnut tree. My yard, my brother's yard, and my ex's yard are all full of naturalized bulbs, which I really love. I just to make the world more beautiful.

^^I I jusr want to make the world more beautiful^^

I have grown calla lilies just to please the ghost of Katharine Hepburn. They like lots of water, in fact plant them near the hose so they receive spilled water. The white ones are easy to grow though tender to cold. You must protect them if you have cold winters. Zantedeschia aethiopica. Easy to grow if you provide plenty of water.

There are also hybrids now in many different colors, but these are smaller and weaker plants that don't seem to last very long.