Keeyla's article in the SF Chronicle!

 

A quick primer all about bulbs

Keeyla Meadows, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, November 5, 2010

    

I open my garden in March for Show and Tell. What I have to "show" are bouquets of blooming-their-heads-off, full-of-sun-shining-light, colorful bulbs. Sadly, in March, what I have to "tell" visitors wanting to know where they can get these spring beauties for their own garden is that I planted these bulbs in November. Well, here it is November, so you are in luck. Now is the time to be fearless with the use of color in your garden by planting bulbs.
While a vast array of flowering and some edible bulbs are available, I always start with my tried-and-true favorites and branch out with a few newbies.
Color is key in how I organize both my planting zones and bulb selection. A bouquet of different types of bulbs including tulips, daffodils, ranunculus, freesias, muscari, lilies and more, are planned for each area of the garden. A favorite matching palette in shades of maroon and yellow is made up on Tango 'Honey Bee' lilies, ranunculus 'Cafe,' and tulip 'Gavota.'
I concentrate my design and plantings around what can be seen from the windows as the weather may be wet during part of the bloom season. Bulbs planted in containers of various sizes work well both in focal spots outside windows and at entries, balconies or on window sills.
After deciding where to plant the bulbs, make lists of what to plant. This is the hard part because there are just so many to choose from.
One approach to bulb selection is practicality. Which bulbs are easy, reliable, will return and even multiply? Do you want natives or edibles? The practical list is long but does not include the reigning beauty: tulips. In California, Tulipmania is a short thrill. Still, just for their sheer amount of saturated color, these beauties will find a way onto your list.
To top off your bulb display, seed the spaces over and between your planting with spring wildflowers. Poppies are my favorites; the seeds are economical and will bloom through the season, providing forage for pollinators: bees, birds and butterflies.
Whether you concentrate on color, edibles, natives or a combination, come spring, you'll have your own garden bouquet for Show and Tell.

Inside: Landscape designer Keeyla Meadows' guide to spring bulbs and wildflowers that attract pollinators and people. L4

A word on organics

This year, while searching the Internet for red tulips, I came across EcoTulips ( www.ecotulips.com). Jeroen Koeman, who calls himself "The Tulip Man," is a pioneer in organic tulip farming. His growing fields in Holland are pesticide-free and benefit by a process of crop rotation-sharing pastures with the cows of an organic dairy. He says that his red 'Ille de France' doesn't need added fertilizer, just a handful of compost dug into the soil. I'm still using organic bulb food. Koeman's EcoTulips are pre-chilled, leaving your fridge free for turkey stuffing instead of tulip stuffing (one friend cooked his wife's tulips for their Thanksgiving meal!).
- Keeyla Meadows

Bulbs for spring show and tell

Here are some of my tried-and-true spring favorites. Note: The rule of thumb when planting bulbs is to make the depth of the hole twice the width of their diameter. I've experimented and found chilling tulips four to six weeks in the fridge is necessary. I plant all my bulbs between Thanksgiving and New Year's.

Color

Tulips are the reigning beauty of spring bulbs. Here are my favorite varieties by hue:
-- Salmon: 'Menton,' 'Big Eartha,' 'Apricot Beauty'
-- Yellow: 'Big Smile,' 'Jaap Groot'
-- Purple: 'Passionale,' 'Violet Beauty,' 'Blueberry Ripple,' 'Purple Prince'
-- Magenta: 'Gypsy Love'
-- Nearly black: 'Queen of the Night,' 'Negrita'
-- Green: 'Spring Green,' 'Greenland' (green and pink )
-- White: 'Maureen'
-- Orange: 'Orange Emperor,' 'Orange Queen'
-- Orange tones: 'Princess Irene,' 'Gudoshnik'
-- Red: 'Ille de France'
Daffodils are easy and a must for those with deer and gophers, as those critters don't like them. Plant them in drifts by trenching out long furrows. With grassy foliage, 'Golden Bells' (Bulbocodium) is a container favorite.

Edibles

Crocus sativus is a savory for edibles enthusiasts. It sports those golden saffron threads so essential for Moroccan tagines. Crocus could share a pot with onion sets, garlic and grape hyacinth, topped by a seeding of borage. Share the forage with the flybys: Bees love borage. Drop blue borage flowers along with the blue "beads" of grape hyacinth spires on salads, or float in soup.

Natives

Skip from forays into color and flavor to jaunts on the wild side of gardening. Nevin Smith, founding horticulturalist of Suncrest nurseries and author of "Native Treasures," has some suggestions for planting out native bulbs. When asked about which to start with, he replied: "Many of the brodiaeas are good with the dichelostemmas being probably the easiest." You can see why they are simply called 'Blue Dicks.' But don't let the lingo stop you in your tracks: There are stunners on this path. He continued: "Brodiaea elegans, coronaria and californica are all good beginners' bulbs." To my question on how to get Mariposa lilies and Brodiaeas to return, Nevin instructs: "Plant them in well-drained soil, with little summer water and a top dressing of crushed coarse gravel." Use native seeds ( www.larnerseeds.com) for bulb cover, and you are on your way to planting a meadow. Next to my list of native bulbs, I make a note to take spring walks to see these splendors in the wild.
- K.M.

Keeyla Meadows the owner of design/buiild/landscape company Keeyla Meadows Gardens & Art andauthor of books including "Fearless Color Gardens: The Creative Gardener's Guide to Jumping Off the Color Wheel" (Timber Press, 2009). E-mail comments to home@sfchronicle.com.

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This article appeared on page L - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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