October 26, 2017

Bulbs in the Oval Garden

As I mentioned in my October Bloom Day post, I ordered a lot of bulbs this fall!
Since I was essentially starting from scratch, with 6 new flowerbeds (depending on how you count them), I knew I would need quite a few.

That ended up being 560!
It helped that I pretty much knew right where I wanted most of them, and also that most of the beds were ready for planting already.

I took quite a few pictures as I went, mostly to remind myself where I put things.

Overall, I bought muscari (grape hyacinths), alliums, 'Festival Pink' hyacinths, Dutch irises, tulips, and daffodils. There were others I wanted to get, but you know--only so much time and money!

All the tulips.
For most of the tulips I got 10 of each variety.
The two exceptions to that were 'Bleu Aimable' (20), and 'Sweet 16' (30).

After talking with a friend who lives up the street, now I must invest in some cayenne pepper, in hopes of stopping the deer from eating the tulip bulbs. Or maybe get a dog.
I actually think the first thing I will try is shallowly planting individual cloves of garlic on top of all tulip patches. Deer tend to leave onions/garlic alone. Maybe that would stop them from digging deeper for the tulip bulbs. I can hope.  
In fact, I just saw a deer today around lunchtime, bounding through the now-empty cornfield that borders the back of our yard. It did not enter our yard--this time--but it jumped right over the 5-foot tall fence into the neighbor's backyard like it was nothing. Oh deer.

With those unsettling thoughts, let's start in the Oval Garden.

When I was planting the shrubs and pie cherry tree, I left pockets of space in the middle of the bed for spring bulbs. My plan is to put the summer bloomers more around the edges. That way, the bulb foliage will not be right on the front lines as it dies back. Also, I'm thinking many of these will bloom before the other stuff has leafed out.

Tulips

I made 2 separate mixes, one for early bloomers and one for May bloomers.
I planted a patch of each type on each end of the bed.
The picture above shows the early blooming mixture I did.

These (above) should bloom in mid-late April.
'Blue Spectacle' (peony-flowering; violet purple) 
'Sunny Prince' (single; lemon yellow)
'Margarita' (double; magenta-purple).


The second mix were my May bloomers:
Tulip 'Big Smile' (single; lemon yellow)
Tulips 'Bleu Aimable' (single; deep lilac)

(Can you see the snow on the ground up in that picture? Motivation to get this done!)


In this section next to the cherry tree, as you can see, I did 3 groups of Allium aflatunense 'Purple Sensation.' They are a violet-purple color and should bloom in May/June.

On top of those, I layered 25 of the Dutch iris 'Rainbox Mix.'
These should bloom about the same time as the alliums and provide a good counterpoint in form and color. They are supposed to be a mix of yellow, blue, purple, and white irises.

Finally, I added in 2 patches of daffodils and muscari.
I put them in on the opposite side of the cherry tree from the alliums.

I have decided with daffodils that I really enjoy variety the most, rather than all one kind.
So I bought 50 of John Scheeper's Gold Medal Mixture, and 100 of their Mini Mix.
Along with the daffodils, I layered in Muscari 'Dark Eyes'--a grape hyacinth that is a darker blue on bottom with a little fluff of sky blue at the top.

The last thing I put in was a peony 'Koningin Wilhelmina.'
It's on the end of the bed closest to the street.
It's supposed to be fuschia, with paler edges on the petals.

As you can tell, I'm still going for a color scheme of dark purple and light yellow in this bed.
It will be interesting to see how all these various shades of purple and yellow look together.
Beautiful, I hope!

I was going to list out all the bulbs and where I planted them in this post, but it's already getting a bit long, so I will break it up by flowerbeds.
You're welcome.

No comments:

Post a Comment