Brighten Your Borders

Pack your beds and borders with a variety of bulbs this month to guarantee a mood-lifting burst of colour next spring. Alan Titchmarsh shares his expert advice

- Alan Titchmarsh

There is only one problem with the bulb-planting season – the speed with which it comes around. Well, two, if you count the fact that there are so many spring bulbs on offer that it is difficult to limit your choice to suit your budget. And yet they seldom disappoint, since all the work has been done for us, with next year’s floral display nestled deep down in the bulbs just waiting to be released. No wonder they are so irresistible.

The great delight of these spring flowers – aside from their reliability – is their lavish display. They bring vivid colour to the garden when border perennials are only just waking up from their winter sleep and, in so doing, they extend the season of interest – and spectacle – in our gardens by several weeks.

We use the term ‘bulbs’ quite loosely to cover true bulbs, corms, tubers and rhizomes. They are all food-storage organs but, in a nutshell: a bulb is a condensed shoot (with leaves, stem and flower compressed into a neat package); a corm (such as that of the crocus) is a condensed stem, with an embryonic flower sitting on the top; and a tuber may be either a fleshy stem with buds all over it (as in the potato) or a fleshy root with buds at the top (as in the dahlia or tuberous begonia). Rhizomes (such as irises) are horizontally growing fattened stems (usually just below soil level), which are capable of sending out both roots and shoots – so glad we’ve sorted that out!