Best Gardening Bulbs for Spring Color

This is the season for planting gardening bulbs in your landscape for spring flowers in a variety of colors. Use bulb layering techniques to extend the life of a bulb garden and consider planting these spring flowering bulbs.

Gardening Bulbs – Daffodil Flowers add Cheerful Spring Color

Bulb gardeners almost always turn to daffodil flowers to brighten the bulb garden landscape. These spring flowering bulbs are easy to buy; daffodils are often available in large, bulk bulb bags for a discounted price.

Daffodil flowers are usually yellow, but white, pink and bicolor flowers are also regularly seen. Most daffodil flowers are single, trumpet-form flowers but again, hybridizers have created a lot of variety with double forms, ruffled petals, and shorter trumpet lengths.

Gardening Bulbs – Planting Iris Bulbs for Spring Color

Iris bulbs are grown for a wide variety of garden situations but a favorite of bulb gardeners is the reticulated iris (Iris reticulata) which blooms in early spring. Dark purple flowers often have yellow or white streaks through the petals or throat creating beautiful accents for spring color.

Other iris bulbs which tend to bloom earlier in the year include:

• Siberian Iris (Iris siverica) – This iris is a beardless form of iris.
• Juno group irses (Iris bucharica) – These irises bloom late spring to early summer and are fragrant.

Gardeners have long grown iris bulbs in a variety of gardening situations but it is the opinion of this author that the early, diminutive spring flowering iris bulbs are the most beautiful.

Gardening Bulbs – Tulips Add Formal Spring Color

Tulips have such a tall and stately air about them, without being too stuffy, and the early color is a boon to gardeners after a long winter. Tulip flowers also grow in a variety of heights, from an eye-catching 4′ tall, to a diminutive 18″ depending on the cultivar planted.

Tulips are available in a wider variety of colors than the daffodil flowers are, so if you are looking for choice that rivals the iris, consider planting tulip bulbs. Solid reds, yellows, near blues, purples and even dark maroons approaching black are available now. Additionally, tulips are available in bicolors as well, creating a wide palette to choose from.

Tulip bulbs can be planted in the fall, along with daffodils and iris bulbs so that the spring color will be a symphony of color in the spring garden landscaping. Gardening with bulbs is so rewarding, many home landscapers find that they add more bulbs each fall to feed a growing addiction!