Brian Minter: Plant these bulbs now to get colour every season

01.10.2024 - 15:47 / theprovince.com / Brian Minter

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It’s the only time of the year you can plant bulbs that will flower in fall, winter, spring and summer and what a wonderful opportunity to plan a repeat garden performance for each season, which will improve every year as the bulbs perennialize and expand their show.

In just a few weeks the autumn crocus, or colchicums, will pop out of the ground, provide fresh new colour for your late summer garden, and then disappear until their foliage emerges in April to help grow new bulbs for the next year.

Native mainly to Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean, these autumn crocus also have been found in much of Europe and even Britain. There are over fifty species of colchicums, but the fall blooming beauties here are colchicum autumnale. It’s the most prolific single flowering variety, lavender in colour, and grows to about five inches, with the new corms often producing three to five flowers. They naturalize early and in a few short years will become a solid colourful ground cover.

Also usually available now are the single flowering white, c. Album, as well as a beautiful double white, c. autumnale album plenum. Another very popular variety is c. autumnale Water Lily, which is a quite spectacular fully double lavender pink.

The often unexpected and sudden colour they bring to our late summer gardens is always refreshing, and they make a great underplanting to rhododendrons, standard hydrangeas and small trees.

The more sought-after and well-known fall bloomers are the Saffron Crocus, or crocus sativus. Historically used as a dye, its true value is the