PART of the pleasure of gardening lies in the anticipation of future delights. At this time of year, as the garden is beginning to hunker down for autumn and before the descent into the dark days of winter, gardeners can console themselves by planting spring-flowering bulbs, envisaging the colour and cheer they will bring when the bleak days are done.
The enchantment of most kinds of spring bulbs is ephemeral, sometimes lasting only a couple of weeks, but each is a waymarker that leads the garden out of the winter and towards summer. Long-awaited snowdrops are quickly joined by aconites, which give way to crocus, before waves of daffodils and hyacinths and an explosion of tulips and alliums. Each bulb bounds into flower and then falls back, withdrawing into itself to wait, it is hoped, for a repeat performance the following spring.
Bulbs are the most dependable of plants; with the minimum of effort, they will reliably flower only a few months after planting.
Next spring's potential flowers have already developed within the bulb. How well they perform depends less on what greets them as they emerge and much more on the conditions they faced last season. Newly bought bulbs will have been pampered in nurseries or given perfect growing conditions in fields, which means they are almost guaranteed to flower. Plant over the next two months, leaving tulips until November.
Getting established bulbs to re-flower is, of course, dependent on the extent to which the growing conditions are suited to the particular species. Many of the bulbs we grow in this country come from places where winters are cold and summers are hot and dry. Usually, a bulb in the wild will build up enough energy after blooming to produce a bud for the following year, but sometimes, even in the wild, this may take a couple of seasons. Don't be disappointed if the same happens in the garden.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 11, 2024 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة September 11, 2024 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
