Start next year off with a bang
Fancy gazing out over a border bursting with flowers next spring?
Planting a selection of spring-flowering bulbs in your borders is a fabulous way to create a sea of colour and texture in spring.
Here’s our guide on How to Plant Bulbs in Borders to go alongside Eve’s video.
Choose your favourite varieties
First things first, you need to decide on how you want your spring borders to look.
Fancy a kaleidoscope of colour? Tulips are a spring classic that come in a wide range of hues and textures for an explosion of spring colour.
Prefer a more minimalist look? Daffodils, Snowdrops and Lily of the Valley are great for creating a bright, fresh, uplifting display.
Pop into your local British Garden Centre to browse our collection of Spring Flowering Bulbs.
Design the perfect display
Once you’ve chosen your bulbs, it’s time to think about where you want to plant them.
A great way to visualise how your display will look is to lay out your bulbs on top of the soil in groups of 2 to 5 bulbs.
Before you start, it's important to imagine what your border will look like once each of your bulbs has flowered.
Here’s three things to consider when choosing where to plant your spring bulbs:
Colour
Spring flowers look best when clustered together in groups of similar or complementary colours.
You can also go a step further and create a colour theme for your entire display.
Time of flowering
Different bulbs flower at different times.
Helpfully, your pack of bulbs will state the flowering window for that variety.
Aim to group together bulbs that bloom at similar times.
Height
To make sure you can appreciate each and every one of your spring flowers, it’s important to consider their eventual height when planting in borders.
Smaller flowers like Snowdrops and Dwarf Iris should be planted near the front of your border, while taller-stemmed varieties like Allium and Delphinium should be kept at the back.
Take the pain out of planting
If you want to make your life a lot easier, you should invest in a good bulb planter.
Bulb planters not only make digging the hole for your bulb a breeze, they often feature markers so you can easily plant your bulbs to the right depth (this should be printed on the packaging).
Short-handled bulb planters are nice and easy to use; long-handled planters are great for bigger planting jobs or for digging into thick or heavy soil.
Water well - then wait!
Once you’ve planted all your bulbs, give the whole area a thorough water.
Then all you need to do is wait very patiently until next spring!
Thanks for reading.
