Fall for Bulbs

Articles→Plants→Flowers→Bulbs

By Andrew Bunting, September 29, 2022

As the days become cooler and rich fall colors begin to express themselves in landscapes and gardens, this offers a visual cue to start thinking about adding bulbs to our gardens. 

While the prime “window of opportunity” for planting bulbs varies with your region and gardening zone, in my area, the Mid-Atlantic, the ideal time to plant bulbs begins around the first frost of the year.  

If you are thinking about adding bulbs to your garden, wait until a killing frost happens. This frost will end the lifespan of your current season annuals and tropicals and aid in cutting back your perennials. Once this happens, you can remove these plants and create space for bulbs.  

Entire encyclopedias have been written on great bulbs for the home garden. Below is a primer on planting fall bulbs for a spring appearance of beautiful colors. While we often think of tulips as the “go-to" fan favorite, the below bulb varieties are alternatives offering great hardiness and resiliency, stunning color, and springtime interest in the garden. Many of the bulbs highlighted will eventually multiply and form large masses and clumps and, in most cases, are squirrel and deer resistant, combatting a common issue with bulbs. 

How to Plant Bulbs 

When planting fall bulbs, you want the air temperature to be cool enough that the bulbs will remain dormant in the ground, but the soil to still be warm enough that the bulbs will establish some roots heading into the winter. A general rule is that bulbs should be planted 2-3 times the length of the bulb. For example, if the bulb is two inches long, then you should plant it four to six inches deep. All bulbs have a flat side where the roots will generate, and this should be facing downwards. The spacing of the bulbs will depend on your desired stylistic effect, with wider spacing creating a more naturalistic effect. 

Great Daffodils 

The daffodils or Narcissus are truly one of the harbingers of spring and come in a variety of sizes and styles. Trumpet daffodils have a larger stature and are more pronounced and majestic, while small-cupped daffodils produce only one flower per stem, and the central cup is relatively small. There are daffodils with many flowers on a single stem and others that carry sweet fragrance. Below is a short list of some of the most notable varieties. 

• ‘February Gold’ can start to flower as early as February (depending on where you live in the country) and is characterized by both sulfur-yellow reflexed petals and a “cup” or “trumpet” of the same color; on average, it reaches 10-12” tall.  

• ‘Jetfire’ has a similar stature and is slightly fragrant, but the reflexed petals are golden-yellow, and the trumpet is an amazing, contrasting deep orange.  
• ‘Mount Hood’ is an heirloom daffodil introduced in 1921 with large flowers and a pronounced trumpet that is a pure alabaster white.  
• ‘King Alfred’ is the all-golden colored counterpart. Other varieties of large-stature daffodils in varying color palettes  are ‘Ceylon,’ and ‘Ice Follies.’ 
• ‘Barret Browning’ is a great small stature, naturalizing daffodil with an orange cup and contrasting pure white petals.  
• One of the most elegant of all the daffodils is ‘Thalia.’  Each stem on this daffodil has up to 5 pure white pendant flowers per stem.  

• ‘Baby Moon’ has canary-yellow flowers, and ‘Sailboat’ reaches 10-12” tall with ivory-white petals and a contrasting yellow cup. These daffodils are petite, prolific bloomers with sweet fragrance, and make a good choice for a rock garden or small courtyard garden. 

Snowdrops and Snowflakes in Fall 

Aside from daffodils, the snowdrop, Galanthus is a small bulb that can bloom from fall into late winter, offering a garden floral interest during these cool months. Depending on the species and the cultivar, the flowers are characterized with pendant, alabaster white, teardrop-shaped flowers with intriguing green markings, and Galanthus nivalis is the most common.  

Related to the snowdrops are the equally wonderful snowflakes, or Leucojum. Leucojum vernum, the spring snowflake, has pendant petals with yellow-green markings that overlap, creating bell-like flowers on 10-12” stems. Leucojum aestivum, the summer snowflake, is one of the most elegant of all the bulbs, and blooms in mid-spring with tall stems 1-2’ feet tall and an abundance of elegant, dangling white bells. Both the snowdrops and snowflakes are also resistant to rabbits, squirrels, and deer. 

Sweet Smells 

Another wonderful small bulb to combine with the snowdrops and snowflakes are grape hyacinths, Muscari. Each 6” stem has a tight spire-like cluster of small urn-like flowers. One of the many cultivars includes Muscari armeniacum ‘Valerie Finnis’ which has dense, fragrant, powder blue flowers, ‘Siberian Tiger,’ which has pure white flowers, and Muscaria aucheri ‘Blue Magic,’ which has sky-blue flowers with a white eye. In a small garden, they can be used in clumps, but for larger properties they can be used in large, naturalized masses. 

Bold Alliums 

There is not a spring bulb better for deer resistance in the garden than the ornamental onions, Allium. Typically, they can be one of the latest flowering bulbs coming into flower from May to June. Because of this flowering period, they can be great companion plants for geraniums, baptisias, and more. ‘Purple Sensation’ has 4-5” wide heads atop 24-30” stems that are a beautiful violet purple. ‘Globemaster’ has “flower power” unlike any other bulb with 10” wide vivid purple clusters of flowers on tall, 36” stems. 

While it may seem early to think about your spring garden’s stylistic and design choices, fall is the ideal time to consider what types of bulbs you want to include in your garden to offer spring interest and take action to get them into the ground before the soil gets too cold. Consider some of the bulb varieties and planting strategies mentioned above, and you are sure to have a stunning display of blooms come spring.