Certainly easy to forget about the foliage when doing bulb mixes as it's the bloom we usually want. I've done that myself a few or many times
I think it's easier if one mixes smaller bulbs or perhaps just one larger with some smaller ones, but with so many bulbs available today there should be an almost endless number of combinations that could surprise! I rather like the term 'time share' for this myself as it's so descriptive of what one ideally could accomplish when mixing bulbs or perennials. I read the term 'time share' in that context for the first time in Ian Young's bulb blog and he does this so very well:
http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/lo... .
Like Neal I have mixed Daffodils and Daylilies and as I understand things, this is an almost classical combination, recommended by many. Same goes for mixing Hosta and Snowdrops which also works really well. Initially I also thought the results with Daffodils and Daylilies were excellent, but as the bulbs were eaten from the inside by narcissus bulb fly larva i got to admit there was a good reason replanting was never any problem, very easy indeed
.
I have however planted a color mix of
Muscari aucheri from the Magic series in between some Dayliles and the plan is that when it's time for replanting I'll lift the Muscari as the foliage yellows and store them over summer and then replant them when I finished dividing the Daylilies later in the year. This is more planted like a mat between the Daylilies than as small groups, but still with some distance between them, but if I can't lift all the bulbs this is okay. I do find it really difficult to dig for bulbs blindly in the autumn without foliage attached, so I try to avoid that as much as possible. We will see how this works in the end.
