I'm impressed by how hard you're thinking these things through.

I don't foresee any problems with the muscari but the lilies are an issue. They don't go dormant properly speaking and it's very tricky storing them over the winter. They will deteriorate if they're not in the ground. Really, you should find some place you can sink them in the ground for the winter, even if it's a friend's vegetable garden.

Also, the fancy varieties of tulips tend to be poor performers after the first year. Mind you, lifting and storing them dry should help considerably. They do like to be dry when they're dormant.

What are you planning on doing with the asters over the winter? These are not plants that are normally lifted.

You'll never know till you try, but those are things you should keep in mind. If you're willing to experiment, go for it. Pretty ambitious projects for a beginning gardener, but why not?

Have fun and I hope these scattered thoughts have helped a bit.

Janet's Garden

It's the backstage management that will help your project work.

You need a place to get the other plants growing on - then use the planters as you would for flower arranging, only these ones have roots. ;-)

You can grow asiatic lilies in 5 litre bags of potting mix quite easily. They bulk up rapidly so you will need to put the inevitable offsets into other bags for growing on - and either repot or rebag each year. Bags would probably work best because you can cut it open and put in the lily with very little root disturbance so long as the mix is damp when you do it.

Dahlias need a few months to bulk up before flowering, too - and regular feeding/watering to get them to flowering. Another subject for baggie culture...

Muscari. It's probably zone 9 prejudice - but, there's an awful lot of streaming leaves and zillions of spawn for a short display, IMO. That's why mine stay in pots and get thinned ruthlessly. And they start to grow in late summer-autumn, needing several months of sunbathing plus winter wet.

Depending on the sort of tulips you want to grow, you might want to consider teaming them with something herbaceous that grows tall enough to give them a modicum of support for their stems and a foil for their flowers.

You might not need to actually plant up your containers, either. If you were to choose your growing-on pots with an eye to positioning them in the big pots in a gravel mix with a sphagnum top or similar - you could easily change the seasons. One pot out and another in, including filler plants. All sleight of hand and careful stage management!!

Guys, you are wonderful! Your help is priceless for me.
More questions are coming though...
Janet, if I will keep asters in small containers and sink them in the ground for winter, will it work? I do not have a friend with vegetable garden though :-). I do have a neighbor next-door, old lady, who has a vegetable garden which is forbidden by our HOA. And squirrels eat her tomatoes on my deck... Nevertheless I will find a spot for my plants to overwinter in the ground. And I am going to do the same with lilies.

I can skip on Muscari, if it that difficult to combine them with tulips in terms of care and storage.

vetivert8 , the idea to grow lilies and other plants in the bags is completely new to me. Can you please describe how exactly to do it? 5 litre bag for one lily bulb? And can you recommend some herbaceous plant to interplant with tulips?
The tulips I am going to buy are not good perennializers (parrot and peony flowering). But I am willing to experiment and mimic their native conditions - store them dry in summer and chill prior to planting in early fall. And see what will happen. If it will fail, I will replace them with more reliable types. It is probably too ambitious for a novice, but I am having fun doing this:-)!

Janet, your garden is gorgeous, and your 'dancing on the earwigs' article - wow! Thanks!

P.S. I apologize if you have trouble reading my posts. After 5 years living in America English is still a struggle for me... And it is O.K. to make fun of it! After all, my kids do it all the time.

Alina, your English is just fine! My kids laughed at my accent in French, even though it wasn't a big one... Sometimes you just can't win.

I haven't tried doing anything quite like you are planning, but I would think that your plan would work well with the asters if the containers are large enough. Cramping the roots would probably not be a good idea, although they wouldn't need any extra room if they're going into larger pots when they start active growth.

It all sounds like quite a fun experiment and I am looking forward to hearing reports on how it works!

Thanks for the kind words, Alina. I hope you found something you can use on the blog.

Janet's Garden

Hi Alina

Yes, a bulb to a 5 litre bag. Make drainage holes in the bottom of the bag. Take out about the top third of the mix and put in the bulb, then cover it up.

I'm not sure what you would do over winter because winter here is more wet and miserable than 'frost and snow'. Perhaps placing the bags in a polystyrene box and wrapping with plastic bubble sheet before putting it in the basement. So long as they don't dry out - and you have a note on the calendar to remind you to check for signs of returning life.

Asters will also grow and flower in bags - but they don't reach their full height because they bulk up very rapidly and dry out quickly in the summer. Erigeron is also a possibility. If it isn't a pest plant in your area, Erigeron karvinskianus can be a very useful filler, and several of the others flower for long periods, too.

The best way to water plants in bags is to plunge them in a bucket of water, wait until the bubbles stop, then put them to drain. It's very easy to add a dilute solution of fertiliser to the water - to do two jobs at once.

For 'in between' - tall forget-me-not (Myosotis), ornamental cabbages or kale(!), Violas, Calendula, Hosta, Thalictrum (foliage), grasses and sedges, Geranium, Corydalis, Nigella, dwarf Aquilegia. (You can tell I like the 'misty/frothy' look!) Heuchera, Tiarella, large Ajuga. Echeveria secunda, creeping Phlox, Anemone coronaria in a single colour, dwarf wallflowers... Diascia, Mimulus, Nemesia.
By themselves or two varieties eg forget-me-not and cream wallflowers, Nigella and Hosta.

It's really hard to say because I don't know when plants come out in your area, or whether you experience sudden heat spells which can definitely shorten the flowering time of a display.

My own view, with the parrot tulips, is to let them be the stars of the piece and use a solid colour in the supporting plant's flowers either as a foil or to echo one of the colours in their petals. Or have foliage which does the same thing.

Thank you so much!
You gave me some new ideas for my project. I am going to think things over again. And if I will have any success with this project, I will report and post the pictures.
Alina.