When you go into the shed and tally a stash of bulbs at 2,900, there is only one thing left to do: Order another 1,000.
I am a bulbaholic. There are few spring bulbs I don’t plant, and if I live long enough, that will be corrected.
In lean years, I might just throw in a few hundred, though I don’t feel as if I’ve made sufficient effort unless there are a couple of thousand nestled in the cold clay, to accompany the thousands more already there from previous years. My garden amounts to maybe a quarter of an acre. It is amazing how many bulbs you can stuff in if you have to. And I do.
People who do not share this obsession — which is to say, most people — wonder what’s going on: Why would anyone invest something close to $1,000 and an unthinkable amount of autumn labor for a flower show that will peak for three or four weeks in April?
Certainly a mere handful of tulips or daffodils has its cheerful value, and one bloom alone can capture the essence of the whole spring. There is no shame in modesty. But large drifts of certain wilder varieties summon the great forces of nature, and now the woodland floor is awash with — fill in the blank — daffodils, squill, snowdrops or anemones.
Other displays are pure indulgence, particularly tulips and hyacinths, many of which don’t repeat well year after year and are best ripped out after blooming.
But even with tulips, the impulse to plant does not stem from greed alone: If you are going to create powerful splashes of color or play with color combinations, you need enough of them to make a statement. You can’t paint a landscape with one tube of pigment.
I have a few hundred daffodils, but the bulk of my orders this year are of big tulips and little grape hyacinths. The tulips are for a spring blowout and consist of late-season varieties that will bloom in late April into early May with the dogwoods and crabapples. I am making a blend of pink, white and purple-blue tulips that include `Maureen,’ `Blue Parrot’ and `Pink Diamond,’ and they will be planted in beds around the house in a very structured environment of walls, windows and paving. The inclusion of supremely architectural flowers in this little world is greatly satisfying.
Gay Barclay, whose spring garden in Potomac, Md., also shows the signs of bulb addiction, likens the tulip display to a once-a-year party. “It’s like going to an expensive restaurant — it’s an annual extravagance,” she said. Except the meal might last two weeks, and you have the added pleasure of cutting the flowers for bouquets for yourself and friends.
Catching the fever
Everyone’s obsession has unique origins. For Barclay, it was when a friend came by at bulb planting time with an English gardening luminary. “And he said, `Oh my dear, don’t you know how to do this right?'”
The correct way, he instructed, was to plant “puddles” of bulbs, in groups of at least 25. You then get up from the bed and step around and get a sense of how each puddle looks from certain angles.
In my garden, a path of large stones lends itself to filling in, and what better, I thought, than to create a haze of blue with bulbs? This floral river first was planted with glory-of-the-snow, whose tiny white pips push up delicate blue stars in early April. But the glory-of-the-snow has not spread as I had hoped (self-sown seedlings take five years to reach blooming size).
A couple of years back, I visited the Keukenhof, a bulb-fancier’s mecca in Holland, and much of my undoing is linked to this sojourn. With 7 million bulbs, the Keukenhof has its kitschier moments, but one spot stopped me in its tracks: a broad path into a woodland leads to a carpet of grape hyacinth, a bulb with one of the most saturated blue hues in the garden. The Keukenhof river is an extraordinary sight and one, I thought, that I could emulate in a humble way.
Hence, this fall, I have three species of grape hyacinths, totaling almost 3,000 bulbs, to be planted along this path. The bulb will return year after year and multiply, along with the existing glory-of-the-snow. Perhaps, considered in that light, the bulb binge doesn’t seem so loony. Perhaps.
Another way of tempering the mania is to find people who are even more obsessed. Bulb company owners say they are finding increasing numbers of mainstream gardeners placing large orders, though statistics are not available. “There are a fair number of individuals who are planting meadows, planting big sweeps, making some focal statements,” said Brent Heath of Brent and Becky’s Bulbs in Gloucester, Va. “There’s a trend indeed.”
Another catalog, John Scheepers Inc. in Bantam, Conn., has a sister company called Van Engelen that sells bulbs in bulk to consumers at discounted prices. Jo-Anne van den Berg-Ohms, company president, said orders have grown “by leaps and bounds” and with some customers phoning in quantities that would rival public institutions.
In Tamaqua, a town in northeastern Pennsylvania, Doris Kehlor recently began her annual planting of 8,000 bulbs, mostly tulips. Around 6,000 will go in her front garden, the remainder in the back.
Each planting is carefully coordinated (no reds or oranges) and matched to a total of about 30 hanging baskets of spring annuals. It is a display that draws onlookers near and far, to the point that between mid-April and mid-May countless people arrive on the doorstep for a tour. “During tulip time, we don’t get to eat,” she said. “It started out, I might have put in maybe a thousand and everybody loved it. So then I thought, well, I’ll do 2,000 this year, and it just kept growing.”
Kehlor is an elementary school teacher though “I’m not working now. I devote my time to working in the yard.”
No end in sight
John McClain, an attorney with a house on an acre in Gladwyne, Pa., may take the cake. “Two years ago, I got up to 25,000. Last year, it was 35,000, and this year it’s 40,000.”
He said he plants them in various assortments and doesn’t worry too much about compatibility because “I have never seen two flowers that didn’t go together.”
He says he is driven by the rewards of showing his neighbors and others the joys of gardening, and believes that the money he invests is recouped in the increased value of his property.
One of the bleak realities of a shed full of bulb boxes is that the contents must be planted. Bulbs are living organs and must be buried to survive. They can be planted as long as the ground doesn’t freeze.
It is a race against the clock, and bulb maniacs have different techniques. I use a long-handled bulb planter for the tulips, peppering a bed with holes. Tulips and daffodils are planted about 6 inches deep and four to a square foot. The grape hyacinths and other “minor” bulbs are buried 3 to 4 inches deep at about a dozen per square foot..
Kehlor uses an auger attached to an electric drill and can do 500 on a good day. She says she will be working three to four days a week until the planting is done.
When you hit a groove, you zone out the world and plant great quantities without thinking about it. Other times, you must force yourself out into the cold. “There are times I think, oh, I have to do the tulips, I would rather stay inside and read a book,” Kehlor said. “But I know how beautiful it looks in the spring.”
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Sources for bulbs
Here are a few sources to contact now for spring-blooming bulbs. Bulbs may be planted until the ground freezes, usually in December.
Jackson & Perkins, 1 Rose Lane, Medford, OR 97501, 800-292-4769; www.jacksonandperkins.com
McClure & Zimmerman, P.O. Box 368, Friesland, WI 53935-0368, 800-883-6998; www.mzbulb.com
John Scheepers Inc., P.O. Box 638, Bantam, CT 06750-0638, 860-567-0838; www.johnscheepers.com
White Flower Farm, P.O. Box 50, Litchfield, CT 06759-0050, 800-503-9624; www.whiteflowerfarm.com
Bluestone Perennials, 7211 Middle Ridge Rd., Madison, OH 800-852-5243; www.bluestoneperennials.com
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Bulb Maniacs, talk to us
Come on, we know you Bulb Maniacs are out there reading this. You can tell us about your passion. And please do.
Send an e-mail by Monday to ctc-home&garden@tribune.com (with “Bulb Mania” in the subject line) and tell us whether you:
– bought 1-50 bulbs this year
– bought 51-100 bulbs this year
– bought 101-500 bulbs this year
– bought 501-1,000 bulbs this year
– bought more than 1,000 bulbs this year
And:
– how much you think you spent on bulbs this fall
– how many bulbs you think you’ll get planted before the first freeze
From our unscientific survey, we’ll tell you about our read on Bulb Mania in the Chicago area. Check out our Nov. 7 issue or chicagotribune.com/home&garden/bulbmania, for our findings.
