Gardeners who love beautiful and colorful perennial flowers that are grown from bulbs can find ways to defy the rules of sun and shade. Although many of these plants love the sun, some can be successfully grown under deciduous trees because they are early bloomers.
Matthew Allison, a landscape architect with over 20 years of experience in garden design, shares a trick of the gardening trade with this choice of early blooming sunny perennial flower bulbs for shady areas.
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Selecting bulbs that flower early in the season can work well in shady areas, provided you choose the tree and bulb carefully. Deciduous trees are unique in that they lose their leaves during colder months, leaving the area beneath in part sun. Planting flower bulbs that grow well in part sun can be possible with bulbs that bloom early in the spring before the tree’s leaves emerge.
Mr. Allison’s top picks for low maintenance perennial flowering bulbs that bloom early include:
Daffodils, also called Narcissus, can add a splash of yellow under the shade of a tree. According to the Purdue University Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture’s April 6, 2006 article by Mary Welch-Keesey and Martha Bailey, the Narcissus genus includes approximately 50 different species. Their trumpet-shaped blooms are 1 ½ to 3 inches wide. Each plant may have between one and twenty flowers, depending on the variety. The jonquil includes certain species within the Narcissus genus.
Source: Purdue University Consumer Horticulture article entitled “Daffodil (Narcissus)”
According to North Carolina State University’s fact sheet entitled ‚”Crocus,” the crocus, also called Dutch crow, typically blooms in early spring, in February or March. Crocus may even pop up through the snow, depending on the region. These plants, with origins in Asia Minor and Europe, are small, reaching only four to six inches.
Zones 5 to 7 can typically grow crocus without mulch, while those living in Zones 3 to 4 would need to add mulch to have success with growing crocus plants. These short, early blooming flowers come in a several different colors, including white, yellow, lavender, blue, and bicolored varieties.
Iris verna, dwarf iris, is another small bulbous flowering plant growing to about six inches in height. The dwarf iris blooms early in spring and may be found naturally in open pine forests, particularly in the Southeastern United States, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s Celebrating Wildflowers series article entitled ‚”Dwarf Iris (Iris verna L.),” by Wayne Owen. The fragrant flowers of the dwarf iris offer a dazzling violet burst of color with three upward facing petals called flags or banners and three downward facing petals called falls.
Shady areas of the yard can be problem spots, but by carefully selecting a variety of early spring blooming perennial flower bulbs combined with hardy low-maintenance shade perennials and/or ground cover plants, those areas in the shade can be beautiful and colorful with low maintenance
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