Now is the time for planting spring-flowering bulbs into the ground and your patio containers! It can be some much fun, as you can really play with colour and shapes. So, who better to ask about the best combinations than Harriet Rycroft. Harriet is a ‘Master-Mixer’, who has 14 years experience planting up memorable mixes at Whichford Pottery:
“I like to plant as many spring bulbs in my pots as I can afford, possibly a bit more than that… This is because I hate winter and the bulbs give me something to look forward to. My spirits start to rise as soon as I see the first shoots poking through the surface of the compost.
At Whichford (where most of the photos were taken), I would plant bulbs together with evergreen shrubs, perennials and bedding plants into containers every autumn, so that there was something for the visitors to look at all the way through the winter and spring. Often I would put 3 or 4 different kinds of bulb into the bigger containers, aiming to get flowers for several months from each planting.
I still use this ‘layering technique’ at home, as you can see here:
If you aren’t confident mixing lots of different plants and bulbs together in one container, try planting them in separate pots and placing those in groups. That way, if you don’t like the combinations you can change them around. I still often do this with bulbs or plants which are new to me – if I like them together maybe the next year I’ll try the same ones mixed together in a big pot.
The choice of colours and shapes is up to you – don’t worry about other people’s opinions, just have fun with it!
Whichever method you choose, think about the flowering times of each plant and bulb and about the height it will grow to, so that you get a long season and so that tall plants don’t hide short ones. I still make mistakes with this after nearly 20 years of planting professionally, but I make notes in an exercise book and hopefully my mistakes are getting less frequent…!”
Here are Harriet’s top 5!
Click on the first photo to kick off the gallery:
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- Narcissus ‘Minnow’ and Muscari ‘Valerie Finnis’: Blue and yellow is one of my favourite colour combinations and the sweet little flowers of ‘Minnow’ complement this powder blue Muscari really well. This is a simple, fresh combination for a small pot. I planted a couple of pale yellow pansies on top of the bulbs.
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- Tulips ‘Professor Roentgen’, ‘Queen of Night’ and ‘Ballerina’: These tulips were all in different pots but I planted the pots as a group, using orange and dark purple flowers and lime green foliage. These are three of my favourite tulips and I enjoy the contrast between the colours and the shapes of them. ‘Ballerina’ is fragrant – it smells of freesias! You could just as easily plant these bulbs in a big pot together – and I often do – but this time I went for blocks of single varieties.
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- Crocus tommasinianus ‘Roseus’, Tulip ‘Silver Parrot’, Pansy ‘CanCan’, Santolina chamaecyparissus and Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’: Once again, I planted the tulips a good six to eight inches deep, added the surface plants and poked in a few crocus corms. This planting was about texture as well as colour: greys, purples and pinks are easy to combine but I also wanted some curliness to go with the parrot tulips, so chose the crinkled looking Santolina and the frilly pansies to accompany them. You can just see the Erysimum’s mauve flowers at the back of the tulip picture, this little grey-leafed shrub flowers from late winter well into late spring and even summer.
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- Here’s a close-up of that fabulous mix!
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- Narcissus ‘Mrs Langtry’ and Anemone blanda ‘White Splendour: The Daffodil ‘Mrs Langtry’ is a heritage cultivar and may be difficult to obtain, but you can get the same effect with Narcissus ‘Jack Snipe’, which is a little shorter but much easier to find. I like the way both flowers have yellow centres and clean white petals. All Anemone blanda are great in containers because their foliage comes up nice and early, hiding the bare compost, and each corm will produce several flowers. The corms are easy to plant – I just poke them in with my finger once all the other plants and bulbs are in position. Have the pot in a fairly bright position so that the anemone flowers open up well.
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- Crocus ‘Blue Pearl’, Tulip ‘White Elegance’ and ‘Mariette’ plus Bellis perennis (daisies): Bellis perennis are useful winter bedding plants in pots, usually standing up to our winter weather very well. Pink and white schemes are easy to do and so cheerful. A little bit of blue, grey or purple stops them from being too sugary. I planted the tulips a good 6 inches deep, then added the surface plants, lastly I poked in some Crocus ‘Blue Pearl’ in among the daisy plants near the edge of the pot. The crocus flowered in early March and the tulips took over in April, while the daisies flowered on and on. I deliberately chose two tulips of similar shape (lily flowered) but differing heights and contrasting colours, and didn’t plant too densely so that the daisies could still be seen. All of these were around the roots of a little standard pear tree, but you can only see the trunk in the photographs.
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- A close-up shot of that sparkling blend!
Harriet was the Head Gardener at Whichford Pottery for 14 years and planted thousands of pots in year-round displays. She now teaches online at My Garden School, blogs on her own site, and gives talks and practical demonstrations. Of course, still gardens at home.. and elsewhere. Harriet usually has about 300 pots on display in her own garden!
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carrotsandcalendula
Thanks for the generous inspiration! Can’t wait to get bulb ordering now.