No More Rules in the Garden

There’s only one rule: there are no rules. Mix anything with anything else. Ingredients: bulbs, bulb flowers and the latest emotional responses.

Many people want to escape for a while from their daily drab routines. This is the kind of wish we can put to good use in presenting flowers and bulbs as attractively as possible. With a wish for more freedom, people are doing things they wouldn’t have thought of doing before. Or they’re doing things differently. But what does this have to do with flowers and bulbs?

Many people think it’s fun to try doing something entirely different by using something with which they’re very familiar. That goes for flowers and bulbs, too. They’re cropping up in the most unexpected places. As if they were simply plunked down anywhere. After all, when you come home with your hands full of flowers, you have to put them somewhere. At that point, anything can become a temporary vase. A brightly coloured pail; an old bottle; even your welliesl

If hot colours are your choice when designing a border, you’ll find many summer flowering bulbs that will fit the bill. Dahlias, for example, provide the most gorgeous gradations of bright colours.

The Melody Group, consisting of dahlias that grow to heights ranging from so to 70cm, includes a red (‘Bolero’), a bright yellow (‘Latin’), a lilac (‘Lissa’) and an orange (‘Melody Swing’). A warmly colourful border with lilies, dahlias, cannas and gladioli is a real eye-catcher.

Designing a summer bulb border must start with an expedition to the garden centre. Every spring, all garden centres have a wide assortment of bulbs in the prettiest colours imaginable. You can choose from dahlias, gladioli, zantedeschias, lilies, begonias – the list goes on and on.

No matter what the size of a garden, if it doesn’t have appealing elements, it won’t tempt you to walk or sit in it. A garden has to invite you to enter, to look, to discover and to enjoy. This doesn’t mean, turning the garden upside down every year.

A good remedy for restoring new life and colour to the garden is to insert flowering bulbs here and there. Pots and containers with nothing but dried out summer plants? Clean them out and pop in some spring bulbs!

The Dahlia family is a multicoloured group. They include, for example. The pompons, the star-shaped varieties, the single and double flowered kinds, and there are all kinds of colours and colour combinations. The Dahlia family even has a ‘black pearl’ in its midst; this splendid.

‘Arabian Night’ is a must for your flowerbed. Moreover, dahlias are ideal for the summer and late summer garden because they flower for such a long time and often late into the season. You can be enjoying these special flowers in abundance even in September.

Whatever you decide upon, make sure you’re doing it your own way – remember, no more rules!