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If you want lots of colour next spring, you need to start planning now. Expert gardener

Sarah Raven gives her advice on creating the ultimate display

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I love spring, mainly for that whoosh of growth when everything in the garden puts

on several inches a week. You go away for a few days and return to a place that looks so di� erent, with foliage and � owers emerging in every nook and cranny. Planting bulbs now will make your garden sing come spring. Here’s how I get a great display from February to May.

Plan for a succession of colour In my garden, Perch Hill, I plan a succession of bulbs so that

Spring - floweringbulbs

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‘I’m careful to have a decent number of really early bulbs so that spring feels like it starts in February’

best. � ese then take you into the great parade of tulips through April and May.

Bulbs in potsI grow lots of bulbs in pots. Concentrating them in a small, contained space intensi� es their overall impact. Both tulips and narcissi look good. You can try using just one variety crammed in on its own: Narcissus ‘W.P. Milner’, the early and long- � owering Tulipa ‘Purissima’ and ‘Orange Emperor’ all work brilliantly in splendid isolation.

Or you can create showy contrasts with two or three di� erent tulip varieties packed in together, cheek by jowl. You can play around with tall varieties towering over shorter ones, or slim and elegantly

Tulipa ‘Night Rider’, ‘Orange Favourite’ and ‘Muriel’

Snowdrops are the first of the bulbs to indicate that spring is on its way

Chionodoxa forbesiiNarcissus ‘Rip van Winkle’

I don’t just get one momentary burst of colour; I aim to string it out for as long as possible.

I’m careful to have a decent number of really early bulbs so that spring feels like it starts in February. � e snowdrops and aconites are guaranteed to be up and cheery by then, closely followed by scillas, chionodoxas and early narcissus such as ‘Avalanche’ and the bonkers double da� odil ‘Rip van Winkle’.

Once you get into the middle of March, there are plenty of da� s to follow, and hyacinths and anemones are also at their

shaped lily-� owered varieties mixed with frilly parrot types, all combined in sumptuous colour combinations.

My favourite pots for tulips are some old zinc washer pots (with holes bored through the bottom) and some slim and elegant longtoms. I � ll them with a soil-based compost mixed with about one third grit (5-6mm pea shingle). I’ve planted them with three di� erent tulips this year, all in together; each variety is at a slightly di� erent level in a sort of bulb lasagne.

In the terracotta longtoms, I’ve got the fabulous new purple parrot tulip ‘Muriel’ in the bottom, the late-� owering ‘Orange Favourite’ in the middle, with the smallest

Galvanised containers of Tulipa ‘Purissima’

Tulipa ‘Orange Emperor’ in tall terracotta pots surrounded by Euphorbia characias at Perch Hill

The Hovel and Oast garden at Perch Hill in spring. Allium hollandicum, euphorbias, tulips and aquilegias

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Spring-flowering bulbs

variety, the purple-blue and green ‘Nightrider’, in the top. � is gives me one of the best ever colour mixes of purple and orange, with � ashes of green from ‘Nightrider’ and scent from ‘Orange Favourite’.

For the metal pots, the latest tulip to � ower, ‘Jan Reus’, goes in deepest, with ‘Flaming Spring Green’ in the next layer up and the early-� owering tulip ‘Ronaldo’ placed on top. � e idea behind this trio is for ‘Ronaldo’ to highlight the � ashes of deep red in the mainly white and green ‘Flaming Spring Green’ from early April, with ‘Jan Reus’ carrying on that colour role a little later.

particular bulk up quite quickly each year. � ey look good coming through a rich-coloured layer of gold-lace polyanthus. � e great thing about the very easy-to-grow grape hyacinth is how long it goes on looking good through the spring. I like the buds, the � owers and then the green seed pods, and they form an excellent upper storey above the three-month carpet of the polyanthus’s velvet blooms. � e bulbs are small so can be quickly planted about an inch deep, spaced six inches apart, using a dibber.

As the grape hyacinths go over in this lightly shaded bed, the so� and beautifully coloured

‘You can create showy contrasts in pots with two or three diff erent tulip varieties packed in together, cheek by jowl’

How to plant bulbs in potsYou can really cram the bulbs in for huge impact with the ‘lasagne’ system. � e emergent shoots of the lower bulbs just bend around anything they hit above their heads and keep on growing. You need to plant the bulbs slightly further apart than you would in a pot with a single layer, so 4-5cm apart is the right sort of spacing. In both pots about 45cm wide, I have 15 bulbs in each layer, so 45 bulbs in the triple-decker. � e bottom layer is planted nearly a foot deep, with a couple of inches of potting compost over the bulb heads before the middle lot,

which are at 20cm deep. � e top bulbs are planted 10-12cm below the compost’s surface.

Where you place your pots is also key as they come into � ower. I love my tall longtoms nestled in with the brilliant acid-green feather duster � owers of Euphorbia characias

‘John Tomlinson’. � e washer pots look good with the jagged, powerful leaves of artichokes, cardoons or Melianthus major.

Bulbs in bordersI am trying to build up the number of bulbs I have in my � owerbeds and add a few more each year so that the spring tapestry gets fuller and stronger as the garden matures. I � nd tulips and grape hyacinths useful for adding strong splotches in the otherwise muted and reduced palette of the shady beds in the garden. Both grow happily in light shade, and the grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) in

tulip ‘Apricot Beauty’ comes into its own. � is picks up brilliantly on the smoky colours of so many of the oriental hybrid hellebores. I use a long-sha� ed bulb planter for tulips in the � owerbeds. It’s then easy to dig out a narrow core of soil, plop in a handful of grit and pop the bulb in on top of that before covering.

Bulbs in the veg gardenIn the spring, I have bulbs to jazz up the vegetable garden, which can look dull and empty for the � rst few months of the year. I’ve tried lots of di� erent bulb and vegetable or salad combinations, planting them to

emerge through the leaves of the edible plants. � is year I’ve gone for a mix of rich, velvety Dutch iris planted with the excellent, long-cropping and sweet-tasting, cut-and-come-again lettuces ‘Cocarde’ and ‘Green Oak Leaf ’. I’ve also planted the stonking great tulip ‘Menton’ among my kale ‘Red Bor’. � e fantastic coral- coloured ‘Menton’, with � owers the size of a goose egg, stands taller than any other tulip I know (sometimes growing to 75cm). As well as its delicious � avour, the great thing about kale is that it goes on looking good for at least six months in the winter and right through

spring. You need to keep picking it and it will continue to shoot new leaves from its central stem. Cut the tops out to encourage new leaves.

� e tulips can be easily threaded through the kale with a bulb planter, but for the irises dig out the soil, plant the bulbs then sow the lettuce over the top. I plant the irises at a depth of 20cm on a layer of grit and add homemade compost.

I aim to plant most of my bulbs in October, except tulips, which go in last, when the � rst frosts in October and November can help to kill any lurking tulip blight spores that might be lingering from previous years.

Tulipa ‘Flaming Spring Green’, ‘Ronaldo’ and ‘Jan Reus’ planted in old zinc washer pots

Left: this Dutch iris is interplanted with lettuceBelow: Tulipa ‘Menton’ with Kale ‘Red Bor’ in the vegetable garden

Tulipa ‘Apricot Beauty’ with Muscari latifolium and hellebores

Layered bulbs in a pot

Sarah uses a bulb planter to plant tulips among her hellebores