Ponce, I just gotta say - I love your posts! They always make me smile. You have so much enthusiasm and excitement and joy in starting on your gardening path, and it's so much fun to see and hear.

I'm going to wish you luck, of course, but more than that is that I know you will have fun, no matter what. You have a great outlook and I'm sure you will have beautiful gardens very soon.

Thank you for sharing your enthusiasm with all of us!
:)
Dee

Aww....shucks. Thanks Dee!

I have gazillions of bulbs in this yard. The only thing I ever do is buy a pot of Hyacinth in the Spring for the kitchen, and plant them in the garden when they're done. It was the previous owner who planted the rest - tulips, daffodils, paperwhites, crocus, hyacinths, grape hyacinths, wood hyacinths, snowdrops, little blue and white and red things I haven't identified yet!

She bought assortments of bulbs and planted them EVERYWHERE. In the grass, in the woods, under the shrubbery, in the middle of Vinca minor, in full shade. Perhaps she was aiming for a naturalized effect, but even Daffodils have a hard time competing with a mature patch of Vinca in full shade.

Every spring I move what seems like a hundred bulbs into the gardens. And every Spring there seems to be a hundred more coming up outside the gardens (cause they multiply or are blooming for the first time)! It can get a little overwhelming. I'm still waiting for some to bloom, and figure out what they are, but soon I will be giving some of these suckers away.

Anyway, I usually plant the bulbs interspersed amongst the perennials, trying to place them into naturalized drifts. I plant them just outside the perimeter of the perennial's roots. That way, the growing perennial foliage generally hides the dying bulb foliage.

Also, from what I've heard, bulbs go dormant over the summer and like to be dry. So I put a lot of bulbs along the street where I have drought tolerant perennials like Hemerocallis and Echinacea and I don't water much there.

Sorry this is so long - bulbs look SO colorful in the early Spring and it lifts my spirits after a dreary winter and I get more excited to garden!

Just in case you don't know this, for maximum effect, it is a good idea of layer these so you get several waves of bloom in the same spot. In my experience, it is easiest to plant bulbs either outside perennial beds or in areas where the plants are already established. Otherwise, you will find as you plant your perennials you will find that yourself digging up bulbs.

Also, daff foliage can be a problem in perennial beds unless it's planted behind something robust that will grow up and fend off as well as hide the fading bulbs' leaves. I have an area where the daffodil foliage overwhelms the heuchera planted in front of it every spring.

Yeah, this fall I'm gonna move those pesky bulbs into another area, and give those coral bells a chance to shine. Oh, didn't I say that LAST year?

My daffs are planted behind hydrangea. That way by the time the daffoldil flowers have petered out, the hydrangea's new leaves are hiding the bland foliage.

My advice, give some thought to hungry critters over the winter. Plant with grit or in wire cages. There is nothing worse than planting all those bulbs and finding out in spring that the critters ate them all months ago. I say this looking at my confirmation card for about 850 bulbs from Van Engelen.

Except don't worry about anything in the Narcissus genus (daffodils, jonquils, paperwhites) - they are poisonous and nothing eats them. They are also long-lived and durable, and reproduce themselves. Once in awhile you have to divide them.

I've got so many Daffodils I've already started giving them away - this past Spring I gave two neighbors at least half a dozen clumps each!