Category Archives: Bulbs

Fairy Crown #4 – Spring Bulb Extravaganza

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In my garden, the month of May brings the familiar song of the cardinal high up in my black walnut tree, the flurry of house sparrows making nests in the cedar hedge and the buzz of queen bumble bees emerging from their winter nests to forage for pollen.  Most of the early bulbs have now faded away and it is prima donna season for shimmering white daffodils and tulips in a rainbow of warm hues. My fairy crown for early May is a celebration of mid-spring abundance featuring tulips in peach, pink and lilac; ‘Geranium’, ‘Stainless’ and ‘Thalia’ daffodils; peachy ‘Gipsy Queen’ hyacinth still in flower; blue-and-white grape hyacinths (Muscari aucheri ‘Ocean Magic’); wine-red snakeshead fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris); a truss of magenta ‘PJM’ rhododendron; the delicate red blossoms of my Japanese maple (Acer palmatum); and the first tiny, blue flowers of perennial Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla).

Now is also the time when I rummage through my cupboards searching out small vases, shot glasses, votive candle holders and favorite mugs to hold these long-awaited blossoms to bring the joy and fragrance of spring indoors.

My front garden flanks the city sidewalk – no fence, no obstacles for neighbours and passersby who wish to stop and gaze or capture the flowers with their cell phone. And it’s never more popular than now, when the bulbs bloom in riotous profusion in what will be a towering prairie months later – no single-color blocks for me! 

I’ve never understood gardeners who turn down their noses at tulips. Yes, they’re gaudy!  Isn’t that the point?  We need color after a long winter.

The ‘Shogun’ tulips continue to open while the big Fosteriana tulip ‘Orange Emperor’ starts to flower as well.  I mentioned how much I love orange, right?

Each autumn, I add to the assortment, but old favourites include the big Darwin Hybrids ‘Pink Impression’….

… and ‘Apricot Impression’…

…. and the elegant lily-flowered tulip ‘Ballerina’. 

Other tulips in my spring repertoire that have hung around for more than a few seasons are the luscious double ‘Lilac Perfection’….

…. and the double fringed tulip ‘Crispion Sweet’.

Fragrance in daffodils is important to me, as are longevity and a tendency to multiply. I love the spicy scent of the old Tazetta cultivar ‘Geranium’, with its clustered, shimmering-white flowers with orange cups, like a hardy paperwhite.

And the Triandus hybrid daffodil ‘Thalia’ – sometimes called the orchid narcissus – is another winner. Its dainty, white flowers with their reflexed petals are lovely in spring nosegays, especially with blue grape hyacinths.

Here is ‘Thalia’ in the garden; you can see how it multiplies. And you can also see my favourite little Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’ still in bloom behind.

I do have a fondness for white daffodils (as well as ‘Golden Echo’), and I love those with salmon-pink trumpets, like ‘Pink Charm’, below.

Finally, there’s the Large Cup daffodil ‘Stainless’ with pure white flowers, on the left below.  

The hyacinths from my last fairy crown fade in colour but stay in flower for a long period. Because I love plant combinations of blue and orange, I mix the bulbs of peach-orange ‘Gipsy Queen’ hyacinth and blue-and-white grape hyacinth Muscari aucheri ‘Ocean Magic’ together with delightful results!  

That little grape hyacinth is a stunner in tiny bouquets, too. Here it is with Narcissus ‘Thalia’, Muscari latifolium and Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’.

Snake’s head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagaris) is an elegant dark horse in the mid-spring garden with its pendulous, checkered, wine-red flowers. The specific ephithet meleagris means “spotted like a guinea fowl” so another common name is the guinea hen flower.

Though it’s not featured in my crown, another bulb blooming in my garden at this time is summer snowflake, Leucojum aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’ (which, despite its name, is a spring-bloomer).  I don’t have nearly enough of these elegant flowers.

We often think of Japanese maples (Acer palmatum) primarily as specimen trees, but stand near one in flower on a sunny day in spring….

…. and try to count the native bees buzzing around the tiny, pendulous, red blossoms, like this spring-active Andrena bee.  That’s the little dangling red jewel over my right eye in the fairy crown.

My old tree is planted in a south-facing site in front of our living room windows where it is protected from the cold, north wind – and serves as my leafy curtain from May through November.  Here it is outside my 2nd-floor window (and that’s my husband strolling out in a spring shower.)

Heading into my back garden, we find the tiny blue flowers of Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla), a frothy groundcover perennial under spring bulbs. It thrives in part shade and is low-maintenance, ultra-hardy, long-flowering and unbothered by pests or disease. There are many variegated-leaf cultivars, but I am partial to the regular species with its lush green leaves. Here it is growing with rhubarb and European wild ginger (Asarum europaeum).

My back garden has a thriving population of ostrich ferns, which is a nice way of saying they’re very successful invaders. Growing amidst them are lots of mid-season tulips whose names I’ve long forgotten, but I believe the magenta-pink one is ‘Don Quichotte’. Aren’t they pretty?

Not all plants in a garden last indefinitely. Some barely hang on, others fight disease, some struggle with winter temperatures – and that’s the case with my Mezitt-hybrid Rhododendron ‘PJM’. At one time, I had three of these hardy, small-flowered shrubs near my lily pond, but over the years they declined, leaving just one to greet spring with its clusters of outrageously brilliant magenta flowers – and a place of honor in my fairy crown.

Speaking of my crown, I’ll leave with a little bouquet of my deconstructed Fairy Crown #4.  What could be prettier than these lovely May flowers?

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Want to see more of my Fairy Crowns? 

#1 – Spring Awakening
#2 – Little Blossoms for Easter
#3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths 

Fairy Crown 3 – The Perfume of Hyacinths

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My third fairy crown for April 25th brings this little wearable garden project one year full circle, from last April 14th when I made my first floral crown. Let’s look at this year’s model, featuring peach-orange ‘Gipsy Queen’ hyacinths; assorted early daffodils including my favourite, the small bicolored ‘Golden Echo’; the fabulous apricot-orange Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’; T. kaufmanniana ‘Johann Strauss’; early broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium); Greek windflower (Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’); dusky-mauve fumewort (Corydalis solida); and forsythia (F. x intermedia).  

Last year, I crafted my very first floral crown with many of these spring blossoms, but spring weather being what it is, they were in flower 11 days earlier. And given that I’d only planted the ‘Gipsy Queen’ hyacinths in fall 2020, they took their time flowering and weren’t in the mix that early in 2021.  

Soon after the “little blue bulbs” from my last fairy crown hit their stride, a few of the smaller daffodils and species tulips emerge, launching a long flowering ‘big bulb’ parade in a rainbow of colors and shapes.  I know it doesn’t look like much now, but this little pollinator island…

….. is filled with fothergilla, sage, catmint, echinacea, rudbeckia, perovskia, liatris and sedums later; it works hard for its keep!

You can see Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ bulking up here.

Given how some of the fancy tulip hybrids disappear within a few years, my most important criterion for tulips is that they must be reliably perennial. Because I’m fond of orange in the spring garden (especially with bright pink), my favourite early tulip is the multi-stemmed, pumpkin-orange Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’ (10-12”).  Here it is with hyacinths and Greek anemones, as well as blue Siberian squill.

Like many species tulips, ‘Shogun’ multiplies nicely year after year.

I love the dark stamens. At night, the flowers close.

This is also the season for the dependable Kaufmanniana tulips with their striped leaves, like ‘Johann Strauss’, below.

My early daffodil favorite is the little Jonquilla daffodil called ‘Golden Echo’, bred by my Virginia friends Brent and Becky Heath, which I have blogged about previously. Its multiple 12-16” stems mean that its creamy-white flowers with bright golden trumpets keep flowering for several weeks. Here it is below with broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium)….

….. with its unusual bi-colored flower spikes.  It’s the first of the grape hyacinths to bloom in my garden.

I like to plant hyacinths (Hyacinthus orientalis) every few years, choosing a spot close to the walkway so their perfume can be enjoyed. As the years pass, their stiff flower spikes begin to relax; though they do not multiply, I still want them in the garden. This is 6-year old ‘Pink Pearl’ with pale-blue striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides), still going strong in our cool spring.

I was quite pleased with this vignette, showing Hyacinthus ‘Gipsy Queen’ in a carpet of blue Siberian squill with Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’ and pink ‘Beth Evans’ corydalis (C. solida) behind.

My Grecian windflowers (Anemone blanda) are flowering now, too; this is ‘Blue Shades’. These sweet ephemerals hail from subalpine meadows and woodlands in the Balkans but they’re perfectly hardy in my garden and such a delight when the long-lasting, daisy-like flowers open amidst the ferny, low foliage. When you’re planting this species in autumn, be sure to soak the knobby tubers overnight and plant them with the smooth side facing down.  Unlike daffodils and tulips which don’t mind drying out in summer, windflowers prefer soil that remains reasonably moist.

On the path into my back garden, the common purple corydalis (C. solida) carpets the earth where tall Solomon’s seals emerge to flower in June. The corydalis has now spread throughout my garden and the “lawn”, but disappears completely within a few weeks.

Some years, I’ve added purple pansies to the corydalis carpet for a little excitement!

In this partly-shaded area under my black walnut tree, the winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) have stayed in bloom a long time, and look quite enchanting with the ‘Beth Evans’ corydalis that popped up in their midst.

Every spring is a little different, and this one is decidedly reluctant. But I have always hated the tendency for Ontario springs to go from snow to tropical heat overnight – and that can’t be said about 2022. In fact, we could well have a repeat of 2021’s late snow, below (possibly even this week).

So it’s always a good idea to cut a few blossoms to savour in the house….

….. because having these little treasures at hand is our reward for surviving another Ontario winter!

My Spring Nosegays

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According to etymology online, a “nosegay” was historically a “small bunch of flowers used to delight the sense of smell”. The word arose in the late 15th century when ‘gay’ was a noun (now obsolete) meaning ‘a gay or bright thing’.  Nosegays gave rise to the tussie-mussie, a handheld bouquet in an ornate, cone-shaped, metallic vase popular in late 19th century Victorian times that became a kind of fashion accessory (plus mobile air freshener in those pre-deodorant days.)  My spring nosegays are different from the summer bouquets I make at the cottage with my meadow flowers…..

…. or the bouquets I make for the living room mantel, like this one with boughs of cherry blossoms and peonies…..

….. or the ones I’d make in hollowed out cabbages and pumpkins! This was autumn 2002.

I think of my nosegays as tiny bouquets that indeed often delight my sense of smell, especially because the spring blossoms I include are often growing too low for me to bend in order to smell their perfume. That is definitely the case with fragrant snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), which I adorned with a small rhyme one spring after a long, snowy winter. 

Snowdrops in a shot glass
How apt, I think.
I could get drunk in these
 tiny, nodding blossoms..
Savoring, after a long sober winter
The first intoxicating sip of spring

Snowdrops flower very early, often persisting under spring snow, along with crocuses, Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkin’ and fragrant viburnum (V. farreri), so they make lovely companions.  This tiny bouquet from March 25th this year had such a sweet scent.  Speaking of ‘this year’, spring flowers emerged early, were buried in snow a few weeks later, and have enjoyed the cool temperatures, allowing them to last longer – something that doesn’t happen often in Toronto,

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There is such a delicacy about these early bloomers, best appreciated up close. I photographed this on April 19, 2020.

Way back on March 20, 2012, a record warm and early spring, I needed three little vases to showcase my spring bulbs. From left we have blue and white Siberian squill (S. siberica and S. siberica ‘Alba’) with glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii), Dutch hybrid crocuses (C. verna), and Greek windflower (Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’) with Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’.

This was April 6, 2020. I liked the little dash of orange from the Crocus x luteus ‘Golden Yellow’, along with the ice blue striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides), glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii), blue Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and pink ‘Beth Evans’ corydalis (C. solida).

When the Dutch crocuses are at their prime, sometimes it’s fun just to showcase those silken purple petals. This was from April 12, 2014.

Similarly, I sometimes like to pick just one perfect spring bloom, like this Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’ on April 9, 2012, and give it the spotlight.

On April 23, 2013, I selected just a few stems of ‘Violet Beauty’ glory-of-the-snow (Scilla forbesii) to photograph. Interestingly, this cultivar has not persisted in my garden, unlike the parent species.

We have a set of antique crystal shot glasses just the right size for a nosegay of spring bulbs. This was April 18, 2019, and featured the usual suspects.

Pastels flowering at the same time, on April 10, 2020, included light pink Viburnum farreri (which I blogged about recently), pink Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’ and ice-blue striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides).

These two little bulbs grow together in my garden and look just as lovely in a votive candle holder.  Blue Siberian squill (Scilla siberica) and Corydalis solida ‘Beth Evans’.  These would normally be finished by now, but our cool 2021 spring kept them in good shape for my April 25th photo.

I adore grape hyacinths and wanted an early one in sky-blue. So last autumn I planted loads of Muscari aucheri ‘Ocean Blue’ and I am delighted. They’re at the front of this little nosegay, along with pure-white Narcissus ‘Thalia’, broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium) with its navy-and-royal blue florets and Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’.

Last April 29th, I combined Muscari latifolium with the wonderful Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’ and Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’.

Last week I plucked just a few flowers from my garden to place in my green Irish mug. Included were three daffodils, ‘Thalia’, ‘Stainless’ and little ‘Golden Echo’, which has become such a favourite that I wrote a blog in its honour.  As well, I added a stem of peachy-orange Hyacinthus ‘Gipsy Queen’ which wafted its scent in my kitchen. Behind are two tulips, T. fosteriana ‘Orange Emperor’, left, and T. praestans ‘Shogun’, right.

This little nosegay had a bit of everything! It was May 4, 2020, so I was able to partner white Narcissus ‘Thalia’ with (clockwise from front) a sprig of blue Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) with a stem of magenta Rhododendron ‘PJM’ right behind it; lilac-purple Corydalis solida; Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’; broad-leaved grape hyacinth (Muscari latifolium); and wine-purple snakeshead fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) at right.

I love bright, sunny colours and this little nosegay in a bud vase brightened up my kitchen on May 13, 2020. Along with spice-scented Narcissus ‘Geranium’, front, I used the orange, lily-flowered tulip ‘Ballerina’; Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’ (which lasts a long time because of its sequential blooming); and a few sprigs of forget-me-not (Myosotis sylvatica) and forsythia.

As May arrives, other parts of my garden wake up. Spring 2019 was quite cool, so the Greek windflowers (Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’) and Corydalis solida were still in flower when my masses of forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) started flowering. I celebrated these “little blue flowers” on May 22, 2019, including common grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum) and Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla).

One of my biggest garden problems here at home in Toronto is the steady advance of lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) through plantings. In my case, it was here when we bought our old house 38 years ago and my mistake, had I known what was coming, was not to eradicate it immediately. Now it is the tough groundcover for most of my front garden and a lot of the back. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to deter the native, prairie perennials that emerge through it for summer. I have had fun with lily-of-the valley, turning it into a fragrant chapeau for a garden party, which I detailed in a blog. And I also add a few stems to whatever is in bloom, including grape hyacinths, Siberian bugloss and forget-me-nots, like the nosegay below from May 22, 2020.

My lawn contains lots of native Confederate violet (Viola sororia var. priceana) and I’ve included them in the odd nosegay with forget-me-nots and grape hyacinths. This was April 22nd in the record-warm spring of 2012.      

In my final photo, made May 23, 2020, I’ve used the green shot glasses and flask from a vintage ‘gentleman’s travelling bar set’ that my late father-in-law gave my husband. Rather than whiskey, it includes the first perfumed blossoms of Burkwood’s viburnum (V. x burkwoodii) along with blue camassia (C. leichtlinii ‘Caerulea’), the final flowers of Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’, lily-of-the-valley, and common grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum). And that’s a wrap for my spring nosegays!

April Snow

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Winter. It’s never really over until the fat robin sings… at least 50 times.

We’re always reminded of that in April when mother nature says, “Here, have another helping!” 

We had snow last night in Toronto, quite a lot for mid-April. I went out with my camera as I often do early in the morning after an ice storm or dusting of snow leaves the spring flowers shocked but photogenic.  My Tulipa fosteriana ‘Orange Emperor’ bowed down – humiliating for an emperor.

Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’ seemed less martial arts this morning, more ‘shivering’.

Sweet little Iris aucheri ‘Ocean Magic’ looked like Arctic Ocean magic….

…. and Muscari latifolium wore a tiny white toque.

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Hyacinthus ‘Gipsy Queen’ looked like she wanted to move her caravan somewhere warmer.

Lovely Narcissus ‘Golden Echo’, my new favourite daffodil whose virtues I extolled here last year, hung her head sadly.

Snakeshead fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) seemed less than impressed.

Miss ‘Beth Evans’ (Corydalis solida) swooned. I’m not sure why, her kin come from northern Europe – she should be used to this spring trickery!

In the back garden, the resident cardinals were quiet – why sing when you can stay warm in the cedar hedge?

But out on the street, the sparrows kept up their spirits, and reminded me to keep mine up, too. After all, April snow showers bring (back) spring flowers, right?

Tulips as Metaphor

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It was a March afternoon with the promise of spring in the air – which was good, because spring officially started on the calendar two days later. But we in the northeast know how cruelly the calendar can be tricked into saying things it doesn’t really mean, like “spring”. I was at the greengrocer a few blocks from my house to buy kale and strawberries, but I treated myself to two bunches of double tulips at the premium price of 2 for $13.99.  A mediocre wine can be had for that price, but it wouldn’t make me swoon like those goblets of yellow and suffused rose. 

I arranged them in a vase and placed them on a pretty trivet, a gift from my sister-in-law. It was made by her sister, who used the time spent recovering from an injury to learn a beautiful new craft. The tulips seemed honoured and bowed left and right as if in frilly crinolines.

I gazed at them through my glass of chardonnay until they hit the high-wine level where, magically, mysteriously, they and the lupine print and the kitchen window turned upside down in the refracted light. This is explained by the formula of Snell’s Law of Refraction, which I advise you to look up, since I am unable to explain it beyond this:  it is the bending of the path of a light wave as it passes across the boundary separating two media, and it’s caused by the change in speed of said wave when it changes its medium.

On Day 2, the tulips opened in the warmth of my kitchen. These two cultivars, yellow ‘Verona’ and bicoloured ‘Verona Sunrise’ are the work of Dutch tulip breeders and hundreds of years of hybridizing from their wild tulip progenitors in central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan) and the Mediterranean. In formal tulip classification, my tulips are called “Double Early”.  They would have been grown hydroponically in a greenhouse in southern Ontario’s Niagara region and shipped to the grower’s stalls at Toronto’s wholesale Ontario Food Terminal where my greengrocer will have purchased the bunches in tight bud early in the morning.

Tulips are members of the Liliaceae family and Yellow ‘Verona’ has stamens with yellow pollen…..

….. while ‘Verona Sunrise’ has dramatic black pollen.

While many people would talk about colourful tulip “petals”, in botany they are referred to as “tepals” since tulips do not bear the sepals we see in many plant families and instead emerge directly at the top of strong stems.

By Day 3, my tulips had opened enough in the warmth of the kitchen that the adjective “blowsy” seemed to apply. But I looked up that word I’ve used to describe certain double peonies and perfumed roses to discover this etymology: Blowsy – “disheveled, unkempt,” 1778, from obsolete blouze “wench, beggar’s trull”. Hmmm, I felt I should have apologized to my tulips, which seemed to have let their morals slip in just two days.

Three days later, ‘Verona Sunrise’ had lost her will. She was on a downward slide….splayed and tired. Perhaps because of my own advancing years, it occurred to me that I should not toss the wilted blossoms into the recycling bin, but rejoice in their decline.

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Besides, my bouquet still had a relaxed integrity, though ‘Verona’ swooped towards the table with nothing to catch her except the rim of the vase.

Day 8 brought a kind of silken elegance to the tulip’s dénouement….

…. and the flowers seemed less like a bouquet and more like abstract still life, frozen in time.

But the virile, jet-black pollen still swirled around the stamens… a dark vestige of its place in nature, in the mysterious, ancient sex life of the tulip.

It was Sunday dinner; my son was arriving to share the table, so I invited the elderly tulips to be our guests.  And we decanted a hearty red wine to toast them.

On the 12th day, the tulips begged for mercy. It was almost time to say goodbye…. almost.

Finally, fifteen days after I brought them home, youthful and freshly budded, old age staked its claim. Black and yellow pollen showered the table amidst the faded tepals.

Dust unto dust, carbon unto carbon. To everything – and everyone – its season.