Tag Archives: bluebells

The bulbs of October

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Bluebells in abundance but now all but passed over for another year

October opened with the bluebells, the pinkbells and the whitebells. I don’t want these in cultivated garden areas any longer but they are very pretty in wilder areas. In terms of a single colour sweep, blue is always best. White might as well be onion weed. Pink is a bit novelty-ish. When it comes to a colour mix, blue should still be in the highest proportion, as it is in the wild. At least that is the rule of Abbie if you are after a naturalistic, sweeping meadow effect.

This was as good as the Hippeastrum papilio got in the unusually prolonged spring rains
Looking happier in previous years – Hippeastrum papilio

Last month belonged to red Hippeastrum aulicum. This month opened with Hippeastrum papilio. It has taken a few years but we now have plenty of this bulb, able to be counted by the score rather than single figures. It is available for sale and it is expensive to start with – probably around $25 or $30 a bulb. But it is not difficult to grow and it multiplies at a reasonable rate if you quietly lift and divide it every year or two, replanting into well cultivated soil with some compost added. Its flowers are large and showy. Its season was somewhat shortened this year with The Rains. It feels as though it has rained most days this spring. The magnolias and michelias did not appreciate the very wet season and were particularly disappointing. H. papilio tried to bloom and did well enough for me to get this photo. Alas, when I looked a few days later, even with their heavy texture, the blooms had largely sogged out and given up.

The erythroniums in a previous year

The dogs tooth violets – Erythronium revolutum – are marginal with us at the best of times. Their very soft blooms can mush up in our spring rains so I had to reach into my file photos, given that there were a few brave blooms at best. The Fritillaria meleagris is equally marginal our climate and has also been and gone for the season. These are plants that are very charming but they will love your conditions more if you can give them more winter chill and less spring rain.

We have failed to get a species name for this striking, late-season lachenalia. Its pink, blue and pale colouring is almost luminous.

The lachenalias have proven more weather hardy for us. Now that the early ones have long gone, we are onto the late bloomers, particularly this rather striking pink and blue number and the white species L. contaminata.

Veltheimias – ‘Rosalba’ is prettier than the more common pink V. capensis

The veltheimias are another large bulb that has surprised us with its willingness to settle in and naturalise. It is a South African native, triggered into growth by autumn rainfall but otherwise happy in dry, conditions. We assumed it would want full sun but Mark’s efforts scattering seed through the woodland areas has seen it settle in without fuss and gently establish in shade as well as sun. Veltheimia capensis is the pink form and it is common enough and reasonably hardy; the prettier lemon and pink form is less common, probably less hardy and is Veltheimia capensis ‘Rosalba’.

Scadoxus puniceus

Our other stalwart this month and into early November is Scadoxus puniceus. Part of the family oft referred to as blood lilies, this species is not common. You will be lucky to find it offered for sale in New Zealand. The summer flowering Scadoxus katherinae (technically S. multiflorus ssp katherinae) is readily available, although certainly not cheap. We have both gently seeding down in woodland where they make big, bold statements with their presence. If you are a patient gardener, you can build these up from a single bulb, as we have. If your conditions are favourable, you may even get them to naturalise over time, as we have.

It may remain a spiloxene to us, although it seems it is now reclassified as a pauridia

I am not writing a comprehensive book so I am not doing a full listing of which bulbs flower this month. There are too many, from pretty Albuca canadensis through to Phaedranassa cinerea,  that sit on the choice, less common end of the bulb spectrum. There are families that we tend not to think of as ‘bulbs’ like alstromeria (we must have those blooming every month of the year) or the vast iris family. And there is that whole cluster of somewhat messy bulbs which often seem to overlap categories – babiana, sparaxis, ixia, vallota, tritelia, brodiaea, spiloxene syn  pauridia and more – many coming into flower now.  I say messy because a fair number of them come up with foliage that starts to die off as the flowers open. There are times I think greater separation between flowers opening and foliage browning off would be preferable.

Ornithogalum arabicum

I will mention Ornithogalum arabicum, sometimes referred to as black-eyed Susan but it shares that name with other plants too, which all goes to show that common names can be problematic. Arabian star flower or star of Bethlehem are perhaps preferable options. It is not that O. arabicum is particularly rare but it does exercise great mystique for me as a prime example of random reinforcement. Every few years it pops up flower spikes but it clearly does not wish to be taken for granted because it doesn’t do it every year. It makes it a fresh surprise and pleasure when it deigns to bloom.

Look at that set of bulb offshoots. Every one will grow, given half a chance.
Even more bulblets forming at the base of the flowers

Unfortunately, I am also dealing with An Incident – The Incursion of the Allium Bulbs. “Oh, that is the one Dad tried to get rid of,” Mark said as he passed. It is probably a species that was sold at some stage but, with over 1000 species of alliums now identified, I have no idea which it is. There are not too many of that thousand that I would accept these days, excepting onions and garlic, of course. Look at how many bulbs a single stem is creating. And not just at the base. If you look at the flowers, you can see a whole lot more babies forming at the base of each bloom. This is a scary rate of reproduction. I shall continue attempting to get rid of it here, even though total eradication does not seem possible. 

Do not be fooled by the pretty flower with the strong onion scent. Let this in at your peril and future generations of gardeners will rue your decision.

A postscript – or maybe an update –  to my last two posts on digging ‘n dividing and bluebells.

I photographed this patch of asters trimmed to the ground because I thought it was a good example of when not to let sleeping asters lie. Digital photography is very handy for dating things and I see it is only three years since these were last dug and divided. It had become a seamless carpet of aster in the time since. Both Zach and I noted that it did not look as good as it should have last summer. They weren’t helped by getting hit by mildew which has not happened before, but there was no mass flowering.

It should have looked like this last summer, but it didn’t. This is from summer 2024.

Time for a dig and divide, which Zach did this week. A perennial that has to be lifted and split every two to three years is on the high maintenance side and we don’t have many in that category. My friend, Sue, who leads the team of volunteers at the pretty Te Henui cemetery, told me she is culling plants that are too high in maintenance for their labour resources and this aster might fit that category. I must ask her for her latest list of culls. Fortunately I have Zach to carry out such tasks or I might be casting around for a less demanding plant option.

Enter the rabbits. After a quiet few months on the rabbit front, they are back and there is nothing they like more than an area of soft, freshly dug garden and mulch to dig. I sent Zach a text yesterday telling him that the rabbits were undoing his work. He was equally unimpressed but at least the photo shows you the size of division he split off from the previous carpet to replant.

I have just replanted the casualties, filled in the holes and spread blood and bone. The rabbits don’t like blood and bone and will stay away from that area but it does need to be replenished after rain and we have had plenty of that this week.

A whole lot of bluebell bulbs, just from the Iolanthe garden. There were more. I have already disposed of some.

The war on bluebells continues and I am at an advanced stage of boredom. I took this photograph as proof that I am not exaggerating. This is by no means all of the bulbs I have dug out of just the Iolanthe garden. Most were never planted there but I will have spread a few when I planted that area in 2019. Some have already been disposed of and still there are more to be dug.

They did not dehydrate in the summer sun. They grew instead.

Bluebells have no place in the cultivated garden. I found a couple of photos from last year, recording our attempts to deal with some culled from the Avenue Gardens. I worried about how many we were dumping on our wild margins and they don’t rot down in the compost. I had the idea that if we spread them thinly on weedmat, they would dehydrate and die in the summer sun. They didn’t. They kept growing. I then thought they might compost in plastic bags in the sun, as wandering tradescantia does. Some did over the summer months but others in those bags were still firm and viable. Responsible disposal is quite a big problem.

Nor did they rot down in the plastic bags, as I hoped.

We have a lot of bluebells in the park and the Wild North Garden and they can stay there. To get rid of them, we would have to go for repeated use of some heavy-duty sprays and we try and avoid that. Besides, they are very pretty in spring. Ours are all Spanish bluebells or hybrids; the more desirable English bluebells are extremely scarce in this country. I don’t think I have ever seen them.

“If they stank like onion weed, they would be seen as a weed,” said Mark. “They are a weed,” I replied.

If we had our time over again, we would think twice about introducing them to our property. Mark put a bit of work into building up numbers in the first place. A decade or so on, I am putting a great deal more work into digging them out from some areas, all but sifting the soil to get the baby bulbs. You have been warned.

From happier bluebell days

Too many bluebells!

So pretty beneath the trees in an area that is not cultivated garden

The romantic haze of blue of a drift of bluebells – how delightful. And yes, it is but only in the right place. I have written about bluebells down the years and we went to some trouble to establish drifts here. Ironically, back in 2007, I wrote: “The bluebell planting was a bit of triumph for Mark. He had been gently nurturing a patch in the vegetable garden to build numbers and came up with about 2000 this year. Now 2000 bluebells may sound a large amount to most people but his mission, he explained, was to try and get that 2000 to look more like 20 000. It takes a huge number to have much impact in a large area.”

I was first inspired by a natural bluebell wood in Scotland back in the early 1990s and I loved bluebell season when our friends, Bruce and Lorri Ellis, had Te Popo Garden. I have a childhood memory of my mother’s treasured bluebells. She was a good English gardener, my mother, and she encouraged us to pick flowers as long as we picked them with long enough stems to be put in vases. But the bluebells were prohibited; we were allowed to pick the common, blue grape hyacinths (muscari) but not the bluebells.

We also enjoy the bluebells in wilder areas, These all grew from seed Mark scattered. The presence of pink and white ones tell you that they are Spanish bluebells.

I once spent some time unravelling the differences between Spanish and English bluebells  and came to the conclusion that what we have here are all Spanish bluebells, or maybe Spanglish hybrids, but not the more desirable English species.

Our mistake here has been to allow some into cultivated areas of the garden. Bluebells are best kept to wilder situations. I speak from experience. Bluebells are thugs; in well cultivated garden conditions, they are more than thuggish and can spread at a frankly alarming rate. Not only do the bulbs multiply over-enthusiastically , but the seed disperses freely and germinates happily where it lands. We started trying to deadhead our garden bluebells some years ago. Now we – as in Zach and I, but mostly Zach – are trying to eradicate them from some areas and to drastically thin them where eradication is not possible. Bluebells may be pretty but we don’t want them everywhere.

Bluebells are fine in this situation, around a tree trunk where they are contained by mowing. The narcissi are bulbocodiums and you can tell the tree is a eucalyptus by that interesting twirl on the trunk.

I am sure we could hit them with spray but that is a last resort here and we haven’t quite reached that stage of desperation.

What to do with all the bulbs that have been dug is the question that is now troubling us. I don’t want to give them away seeing we have decided they are weedy. They can’t go into the compost because they won’t die in there. Some of the early ones went into buckets of water to see if they will rot down but that is taking a long time and we don’t need buckets of water so much as tanks or drums. Also, we won’t appreciate stagnant water as temperatures rise and mosquitoes become active.  

I don’t think they are going to die here, even sitting on weedmat

Some have been spread on a stand-out area covered in weedmat in the hope that they will dry out and dessicate. But they are actually growing and flowering there. Maybe when the heat of summer comes, we can keep turning the heap and drying them out but I reckon they are tough enough to survive.

We have resorted to removing the foliage and putting them into plastic sacks. The theory is that black sacks will heat enough over summer to cook the plants inside them and it mostly worked on wandering willie (wandering jew or tradescantia) in the past but the volume was considerably less.

Our landfill wheelie bin is not to be used for green waste unless it is noxious weeds. I may make a professional decision that bluebell bulbs are indeed noxious weeds and start putting a bag a fortnight into the landfill bin but it will take months to clear them.

Any helpful ideas?

Ajuga – a better behaved blue drift in a garden situation

The moral of this story is not to repeat our mistake and allow any bluebells at all into garden beds. Ajuga is a much more garden friendly option to create a blue haze.

The meadow we are developing in the Wild North Garden with a scatttering of bluebells, but mostly pinkbells, at the top of the photo

It has taken us years to learn how to create a sustainable flowery meadow in our conditions of high rainfall and high fertility but I feel we are succeeding in the Wild North Garden. Looking at it this week, I thought that a flowery meadow that goes from spring to autumn is more rewarding than a bluebell drift that looks lovely for three weeks of the year.

Ralph, back to sniffing out rabbits or maybe rats down in the bamboo grove

For those of you who expressed concern about our dog, Ralph, after last week’s post, I am pleased to report he is not far off being back to his normal self. He appears to have some damage to his lungs with a persistent cough. We have our fingers crossed that this may heal over time. Organ damage is a known side effect of the poisons he ingested but whether it will be permanent remains to be seen. Otherwise, he is back to his usual exuberance and if he were human, he would thank you for your concern. We are deeply relieved.

The delight is in the detail

We like a detailed garden, we do. It is not just the big views that catch our eye. Often it is the little delights – tiny, even – that focus our eyes on the close-up. It is possible to have a highly detailed garden without it descending into fussy clutter.

Here we are in midwinter and the small bulbs are bursting into flower. No, this is not early; nor is it a sign of climate change. It is on cue for an area where our winters tend to be mild and lacking in extremes. Goodness knows, we complain as much as anybody about cold weather, dreary days, rain and wind but the plants tell us that it is not as bad as we think.

In the days when I used to write for the Waikato Times, we had a sheltie dog who quietly photo-bombed many a picture. Now we have Ralph channelling the spirit of the late Zephyr, except he is a boisterous photo bomber.

The swathes of snowdrops and dwarf narcissi that we have in areas of the park are only just showing first colour because it is colder on the south facing slopes but there are plenty out in the cultivated areas of garden that are noticeably warmer.

I started with the snowflakes and an obscure scilla that flowers earlier than the more common bluebells. The snowflakes – leucojums – are often taken for granted as robust survivors that are inferior to the more desirable snowdrops (galanthus). This is unfair to them because they are very different as a garden plant and under-rated, especially when we consider their extended flowering season.

I am fine with under-rating this particular scilla. Its only redeeming graces are that it is pretty to pick and it is the very first to flower. It isn’t worth garden space – far too much foliage for the number of flowers – so it has been banished to the wilder margins. We used to have a collection of species scillas – there are a lot of different species – with names like greilhuberi, hohenackeri and litardierei but I think they came to us under incorrect names even before we lost the names. I have no idea which one this is.

I added in the early flowering lachenalias to the flower lay. We still have an extensive lachenalia collection which flowers for us from now through to early November. Some are much easier to keep going in the garden than others but these early ones are toughies which will withstand competition and meadow conditions. The more collectable blue and lilac forms flower later. From left to right we have the most common, robust, cheerful but vulgar Lachenalia aloides (still sometimes to be found mislabelled as Lachenalia pearsonii),  the somewhat more refined Lachenalia aloides quadricolour (quad = four colours, in this case orange, yellow, green and burgundy), the red Lachenalia bulbifera and finally the yellow of Mark’s L.reflexa hybrid.

Sometimes I think I would have enjoyed being an illustrator or a graphic designer specialising in pretty florals but nothing can compare with the ephemeral charm of living flowers.

In a world where the news just seems to get more complicated and worse by the day, where things feel as though are spinning out of control, I find dainty flowers can be a welcome diversion. They don’t come any prettier than snowdrops, cyclamen and little narcissi. The snowdrops are a mix of Galanthus ‘S Arnott’ and G. nivalus which are our two mainstay varieties that perform in our area where we don’t get much winter chill, let alone snow. The cyclamen is C. coum which, according to Wikipedia, has the common name of ‘eastern sowbread’. I am not even going to ask who calls it that and why. While they might have wild sows in its native habitat around the Black Sea, the corms are so small and its rate of increase slow so it is unlikely that would ever make much of a food staple for browsing animals.

The narcissi are a mix of species and hybrids. My preference is for the cyclamineus types with their swept-back, reflex petals but the earliest jonquils in both yellow and white are deliciously fragrant and the bulbocodiums or hooped petticoats are also very charming.

Zach has been lifting surplus bluebells to make way for more desirable snowdrops and baby daffs in the area we refer to as the hellebore border. I suggested he could rehome some of the bluebells – thugs that they are – into the area by our gate where the giant eucalypt came down in February’s Cyclone Dovi. Over the years, I had planted a fair swag of surplus bulbs around the base of the old gum.

When he had finished, I couldn’t work out what the white patch was until I got up close. Buried bluebells, obviously from an earlier planting. Deep beneath the soil that had become displaced by the falling tree, some had leaves 30cm long and still not breaking the ground into the light.  I knew they were tough but that shows a high level of survival skills.

I have spent some time in the past working out the differences between the highly desirable, scented English bluebell and the dominant Spanish species and came to the conclusion that what we have are predominantly Spanish (Hyacinthoides hispanica), maybe with some Spanglish hybrids. They will not flower until mid spring.

We still have the worst of winter to get through but the earliest spring bulbs are a daily reminder that we are on the right side of the solstice already.

Finally, welcome to new subscribers who came this week after reading this recommendation from Julia Atkinson-Dunne. May you enjoy what you read and see.

When the detail brings delight, not the devil

Tulipa saxatilis and simple cream freesias in the rockery this week

Bulbs play a major role in our garden. We use a huge range of bulbs, many no longer available commercially. Some never were readily available. Very few of those we grow are the larger, modern hybrids which are generally what are on offer these days. We prefer the simpler style of the species or at least closer to the species.

Added to that, seventy years of intensive gardening across two generations has built up the numbers most satisfyingly. Most of our cultivated gardens have bulbs incorporated in the plantings. Or at least bulbs, corms, tubers or rhizomes to cover the range.

Erythroniums

We have a fair few that are fleeting seasonal wonders in our climate but we just adjust our expectations. The cute erythroniums – dog’s tooth violets – are maybe a 10 day delight and can be taken out by untimely storms but that is just the way things are.

Meet Beryl. Narcissis ‘Beryl’ with cyclamen, nerines and even a Satyrium coriifolium in the bottom left corner

I don’t grow any in containers now although the same can not be said of Mark. His bulb collection is currently sitting in limbo for us all to see the scale as his inner sanctum – his Nova house – is currently being relocated. He hasn’t taken good care of them in recent times but he is determined to keep some of the rarer, touchier varieties alive. It is possible to maintain a more comprehensive bulb collection if you are willing to faff around with growing them in containers in controlled conditions. I am not so dedicated. My interest wanes if we can not grow them in garden conditions.

Gladiolus tristis popping up unexpectedly in our parking area

It is the random bulbs beyond the gardens that are currently bringing me pleasure. Some of these have been planted. Some have popped up from our nursery days. When trays of bulbs were being repotted, Mark had a strict rule that fresh potting mix was to be used (granulated bark was our chosen medium). Hygiene, he would explain. The old potting mix was spread around the place and at times it had seed or tiny bulbs within it. I am guessing this is how the Gladiolus tristis, a species gladiolus, came to be at the base of a cherry tree. I certainly don’t remember planting it there and I can’t recall it flowering before.

Ipheions at the base of an orange tree

When we plant bulbs beyond the cultivated garden areas, we try and select spots where they can establish in fairly undisturbed conditions. At the base of trees is good, as long as there is plenty of light. Around old tree stumps, on margins that don’t get mown often, or in little spots where we can walk past and be surprised to see them in bloom.

Trillium red with bluebells down in the park meadow
And trillium white with Lachenalia aloides tricolor and snowdrops to the right on the margins by a stump

We have rather too many bluebells now, to the point where I often dig out clumps to reduce overcrowding. The Spanish bluebells or the ones that are crosses between the vigorous Spanish and the more refined English species are definitely rampant, bordering on weeds. That sea of blue is very charming in their flowering season but sometimes it is the one seedling escape flowering bravely on its own that makes me smile as I pass.

The simplicity of a self-sown bluebell
Common old Lachenalia aloides where a tree stump used to be

It is both the transient nature and the detail that makes bulbs so interesting in a garden context. Far from simplifying our own garden as we age, the more we garden, the more we like to add fine detail. That is what keeps it interesting for us.

Bluebells and narcissi at the base of gum tree
Narcissus bulbocodium with bluebells