Papery promises

I do love bulb planting time. So much so that I tend to start thinking about it around mid-summer, when I realise, all too late, that I should have bought double the amount of drumstick alliums and begin putting together rather ambitious bulb lists in my head. It's at times like these that I am glad I only have a small garden and that I can think in numbers of 20 or 30 rather than 500 or 1000! Kinder to my trowel and my bank balance too!

With the building work this spring, I ended up losing most of the bulbs I had planted. A few Rip Van Winkle daffodils were salvaged and potted up (they should have really been in pots anyway as they always looked a bit lost in the flower beds). But only one of my Purple Sensation and Violet Beauty alliums survived the transplantation process and went on to flower last year. I planted the other sad looking, straggly things back in the beds anyway but I've ordered some back-ups just in case. The Purple Sensations had all sold out at Peter Nyssen and since I wasn't won over by Violet Beauty (which I purchased a few years ago in place on Purple Sensation) I ordered some Allium Aflatuense instead.

Image from Peter Nyssen

I've also ordered some pretty little Katherine Hodgkin irises which have very delicate sky blue and yellow colouring. I tend to forget about making potting up spring displays for the garden so hopefully I will at least now have something for when the weather gets a bit warmer. I may even use them in our window box. It's lovely to think that I have these little bulbs full of the spring to come tucked up in their beds of compost, so that on the darkest days of winter I can turn my mind to those little papery-cased promises that I have planted in our garden.