How to plant 440 bulbs

October 18, 2024 4:08 PM

I bought this Ultimate Starter Garden with 440 bulbs. Do you have suggestions on how to plant them?

The contents are:
15 Hyacinth 'Pink Pearl', Bulb Size:15/16cm
15 Hyacinth 'Blue Star', Bulb Size: 15/16cm
40 Daffodil 'Double Mix', Bulb size 12/16cm
40 Daffodil 'Big Blooming Mix', Bulb Size:12/14cm
40 Tulip 'Red Impression', Bulb Size: 12+cm
40 Tulip 'Bright Mix', Bulb Size: 12+cm
5 Allium 'Gladiator', Bulb Size: 18/20cm
10 Allium 'Mount Everest', Bulb Size: 14/16cm
25 Allium 'Purple Sensation', Bulb Size: 12/14cm
100 Crocus 'Large Flowering Mix', Bulb Size: 8/9cm
110 Muscari 'Armeniacum', Bulb Size: 8/9cm

They will be planted in plot about 10'x10' that will be tilled with an electric tiller to about 8" deep. The plot has one young American smoke tree about 2' tall, and mostly bare except for a few bulbs of gladiola, liatris, and tigridia that I don't need to keep. I'm in Seattle.

I could plant them randomly, or preferably with some sort of pattern. I know they will bloom at different times during the spring.

posted by ShooBoo to Home & Garden (11 answers total)

Does the bed back up onto a building or can it be walked around on all sides? And do you have different plans for the bed after spring? Are you intending to keep the bulbs in place for next year? Those questions would all affect my approach to this.
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:18 PM on October 18 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I would probably go first blooming on the outside of the plot to last blooming on the side of the plot, with flowers blooming at the same time organized by height ascending.

So, it would go from the outside of the plot to the inside, crocus, tulips & daffodils mixed, muscari, then hyacinth, then alliums mixed, depending on relative heights. You could make it an exact circle or you could make it several circles, one of which forms an "island" around the smoke tree. If it's up against a building with no path behind, go in a wave/semicircle formation in the bed.

This way something is always blooming in an intentional pattern and all are visible from every direction, but if something doesn't bloom, it's not precise enough that it looks like a burnt-out light bulb.
posted by blnkfrnk at 4:41 PM on October 18 [5 favorites]

Use a attachable router with a good power drill to make your holes.
posted by Czjewel at 5:33 PM on October 18

Response by poster: Does the bed back up onto a building or can it be walked around on all sides?
It can be walked around on all sides, although one side is a retaining wall about 3' high.

And do you have different plans for the bed after spring?
Not at the moment. Any suggestions welcome.

Are you intending to keep the bulbs in place for next year?
Yes.
posted by ShooBoo at 5:40 PM on October 18 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Ok! So the thing about all these bulb plants is that after they’re done blooming, their foliage will die back over the course of several weeks, and you can’t cut the leaves back if you want good blooms next year. So if you’re keeping them in the ground, you want to plant stuff around/among them that will grow more slowly but then overtake them by early summer - otherwise you’ll have a bed full of dead/dying leaves and nothing else. I don’t have specific recommendations because I’m not in your climate zone and I’ve never done a bulb planting this size, but if you search “daffodil companion plant for summer” etc you’ll find lots of suggestions. You could broadcast seeds or plant actual plants or both.

As far as design I think blknfrnk’s suggestions are on point. I personally like designs that are more meadow-style, with distinct clumps of plants mixed together faux-naturalistically, so I would probably organize it with a similar gradation of short to tall plants, but with ovoid groupings instead of rows. Google Piet Oudolf for examples of what I mean. Totally depends on your taste!

Oh, and I’d lean toward keeping the existing bulb plants! You could incorporate the gladioli with the alliums since they’re so tall, and either mix the others throughout or give them their own clump or corner.
posted by showbiz_liz at 6:01 PM on October 18 [4 favorites]

I have a big garden with tons of tulips and daffodils and after they die back, the alliums come. And then my hostas come up. There's maybe a two week period where the daffodils and tulips look sort of straggly but by the time i muster up the ambition to really do anything the hostas have unfurled. Peonies would be lovely too to cover up some of the dying bulbs.
posted by MadMadam at 7:07 PM on October 18 [3 favorites]

My one suggestion is less about pattern and more about location: You should plant the swath of them in the middle of your front lawn. My dad did that when I was a kid and it was really cool to see all the flowers in the middle of the lawn. No one else had a front lawn like that. It is a little hard to keep up with the grass in between but yeah, it was fun. Maybe to combat that, as others have suggested, you could plant other flowers in that space as well.
posted by limeonaire at 7:31 PM on October 18

Best answer: Oklahoma -- I use Creeping Charlie/Creeping Jenny and vinca major around and in my spring and summer bulbs. I also have some wild violets from my mother and grandmother's yards which work in areas that get some shade.

The grape hyacinth will bloom first. I add early blooming varieties of tiny crocus and tiny daffodil. You might want these in front so that they will be hearty next year and not overtaken by their taller neighbors.
Next comes the daffodil, which is usually an excellent perennial. A mixed display can bloom from early spring into summer.
Standard varieties of crocus and hyacinth are fair for perennials.
My tulips were fine for several years, but then disappeared.
I have not planted allium.

Have you considered adding iris? The leaves are tall so they work best at the back. Sometimes the stalks bend over, which I don't mind at the front as long as mowing is not a problem.
I had some native iris from my MIL that were shorter and a lovely medium blue violet.

I use my bulbs for a small side yard around the air conditioner platform. The year-round leaves take the place of mowing.
Bulbs in the front yard are eventually mowed down. I plant a long narrow bed and do light weed pulling from both sides.

You do need a path to the smoke tree to do regular weeding. As the trunk grows, it will crowd out what is planted beside it. Don't expect the leaves and ground cover to be a solution.
posted by TrishaU at 7:31 PM on October 18

Best answer: First where's the main view from?

Your soil sounds like it's be soft and plantable so just plant with a dibber (like a spade handle and 10 inches of shaft, a ground/swan down to a taper to make holes) and a trowel.

the Muscari I'd plant as a wavy band ~2.5' wide and including the Cotinus (smoke bush) and bulge the band around it, either running diagonally, or side to side, or a side and into a corner - depends on view.

The other plants I'd do a loose spiral track (loose so that you can include the corners), and plant the bulbs in (hoped for flowering date order), with earliest in the centre - overlap planting by a foot so the colours blur a bit.

To deal with weeds sow annual pansies (Viola - they may become biennial and/or reseed but are not a proble ime) or something similar that doesn't get too tall, I've used (or want to use) as seeds:
Phlox - short cultivars like Sugar Stars
Antirrhinum, snapdragon - again buy a short form
posted by unearthed at 11:12 PM on October 18 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I worked with small-scale, but professional landscapers at one time. Bulbs do not need to be babied and planted exactly according to direction. Depths are guidelines only. If you are starting with tilled soil, you're going to have an easy time (that is a LOT of bulbs). When doing the "scattered" style of planting, landscapers will often take a spade (a shovel, not a small trowel), dig down, bend the handle to lever the soil up a bit and then simply throw a handful of bulbs into the void space they leverage up, then just pull the spade out and tamp it down a bit. Just put larger bulbs (big tulips, narcissus) deeper (maybe 7-8 inches) and small bulbs (crocus, tiny species tulips) only about 4" down.

You really do not need to hand-set each bulb certain distances from each other and make certain they are pointing upwards. Gravity tells the plant which way to grow.

As for design, I prefer a less formal "cottage garden" style, but you should generally clump varieties together. Completely mixed/random might not look great, so make patches of similar types. Just keep tiny ones like crocus somewhere that you will easily see them in late winter/early spring, and taller stuff (generally blooms later... mid to late spring) further back. You can go as formal as you want. Google some images and go for what you like. But if it's just you or you and one helper, going less formal is going to make your job a lot easier.

It will look great, don't sweat it!

We just planted about 100 fresh bulbs this year, to bolster the old ones that have been in for years and I cannot wait to see the results. I just love examining the soil in super-early spring looking for the little tips to emerge! Good luck.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:20 AM on October 19

4.4 bulbs per square foot is kind of a lot. I would keep out a couple varieties to plant in pots if possible. Plant bulbs in drifts or clumps of 6 or more.
posted by oneirodynia at 2:40 PM on October 20