Gardening with Dave Allan

GARDEN centres are full of autumn planting bulbs, describing many as ‘wildflower bulbs or suitable for naturalising’. If this type of wildlife gardening appeals, be sure to choose bulbs that suit your planting spots. For starters, hardly any of the bulbs on sale at the moment are native to Scotland. But that applies to most of our garden plants and doesn’t matter unless you live next to a National Nature Reserve where only native species are allowed to grow. You’ll probably not have an extensive woodland backdrop as alluringly depicted in catalogues, but you will need enough space to provide a ‘natural’ setting. Arm yourself with an icepack before wading through catalogues to find bulbs. If you want them to flower for more than one year, you’ll have to provide the right growing environment, say beneath deciduous trees or in grass. Choose an unsuitable place for a species and you’ll be buying fresh bulbs every year. Although snowdrops, winter aconites, Eranthis hyemalis, and many daffodils will grow anywhere, others are very choosey. Catalogues recommend bulbs for naturalising, but Sussex could offer a very different ‘natural’ situation to Sutherland. The natural spots for my Gladiolus communis subsp. byzantinus are now in a sheltered, well-drained south-facing bed, not a ‘natural’ patch of open grassland. And, get precise information about a plant species, rather than blindly accepting a woolly description. I couldn’t understand why my Iris reticulata only flowered once in the open ground till I discovered that it naturally grows between 600 and 2700 metres up the mountain slopes of Iran, northeastern Iraq, Caucasus and eastern Turkey. Only a container works at 200m here. Some bulbs, like Chionodoxa, readily establish in grass that gets plenty spring and early summer sunshine. They don’t mind being shaded out later in the season. Others that are also described as being suitable for grass need an open sunny site, but won’t tolerate fertile ground. Crocus tommasianus soon dwindles away in a luscious, wellfertilised lawn. And the delightful yellow scented Tulipa sylvestris, is often recommended for grass, perhaps because of its thin, grass-like leaves. But it’s a flourishing weed in the gritty soil of vineyards, so what chance will it have in a wellmanicured Clarkston lawn? Try using fertile grass to control some of the more exuberant spreaders, like Star of Bethlehem, Ornithogalum umbellatum, or Grape Hyacinth, Muscari armeniacum. They’ve both got beautiful flowers and cope with light shade, but you have to put up with their long-lasting, messy foliage. Alternatively, repeatedly mow after flowering - that’ll check ‘em. But it would be a criminal offence to do this with Fritillaria meleagris, Snake’s Head Fritillary. Give it time to steadily colonise the grass and put up with the modest leaves till the end of summer. Like grassland bulbs, those grown under or beside deciduous trees also need sun and low fertility. They flower before the trees are in full leaf so their foliage can recharge the bulbs in dappled shade. Meanwhile the trees absorb most available soil nutrients, sparing little for the bulbs. For these areas, go for North American and Eurasian woodland species, such as Erythroniums. English bluebells also work well here. Leucojums are possible if you want to plant bulbs in a damp, open woody area. Both Leucojum vernum, the bellshaped Spring Snowflake, and Leucojum aestivum, the Summer Snowflake, can be mistaken for large snowdrops till you spy the little green tips to the petals. Like Alder and Salix, they occur naturally in mainland Europe’s wet woodland: I’ve come across them in damp Swiss meadowland. They’re perfect in places that are damp enough to rot most self respecting bulbs.