Bulb bonanza
Sep 20th, 2007 by Jenny
Marrying in March means some of my home-grown decorations will be spring bulbs – daffodils and crocuses to bloom alongside my cyclamen and primroses, along with plenty of foliage and borrowed pot plants.
September, I have learned, is the month for planting your spring bulbs. So this weekend I was out buying crocus and daffodil bulbs in large quantities! I have amassed a number of terracotta pots from Freecycle (the online community where people give away unwanted things to neighbours who can make use of them). I also bought a few large terracotta pots from the local garden centre and I now have enough pots to put one small pot on each table, two on the top table, and a few large ones either side of the ‘aisle’ we have created in our big wedding room.
One of my big worries is that the bulbs will flower a few days too early or too late for my big day on March 15. So I have bought some that describe themselves as ‘early flowering – February to March’ and some that flower ‘Spring – March to April’. A bag of 90 early flowering crocus bulbs is £5 at the moment and miniature daffs are 30 for £5. With some early flowering and some later-flowering varieties, my hope is that at least some (!) will definitely be flowering on the day.
We will also then have loads of pots of spring flowers – great presents for wedding helpers, and great for brightening up the house and the patio.
I spent yesterday planting them all in the pots and I have bought some winter flowering pansies which I have planted on top of the bulbs. So at the moment I have a row of pots of winter pansies on the patio – colour all winter and then more to come in spring when the bulbs come up, hopefully! I am also told that the pansies, if sheltered from frost, may flower a second time in spring – giving me another burst of colour that I can make use of in the decorations, hopefully.
Organising the rest of the flowers and foliage is the next job. Plugs of primroses and cyclamen for the tables, and more trailing ivy from the cuttings we took back in July. It’s a bit of a worry imagining it all failing to flower or being caught by frost, but I will just have to look after them all as well as I can and keep them in the house during the depths of winter. And if the worst comes to the worst and I have to buy more plants before the day – well, at least I will have learned a lot about growing spring flowers!