BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Gardening What worked this year?

Now that summer is over, what bulbs worked for you this year? It would be helpful if you would post your planting zone.
Thanks!

I am in zone 6. We planted 250 tulips last year. The tulips didn't stand up to the Oklahoma winds and soon after they bloomed all their petals were gone and I had 250 stems waving in the breeze. We have planted more daffodills (they did great) and we put 5 bulbs in each hole that we dug to see if clumps looked better.

Daffodils are really fool-proof; they are very sturdy. I love tulips, but they rarely come back in my CT garden, if they are lucky enough to survive the deer and mice. Do you remember what kind they were?

There are a number of tulips recommended for gardens under windy conditions. Some of them are:
Early - Apricot Beauty - single
Angelique - Paeony flowered
Monte Carlo - Double flowered
Mid - Ballerina - Lily flowered
White Dream - single
Arabian Mystery - single
Late - Recreado - single
Spring Green - Viridiflora
Orange Bouquet - Multiflowered

You might also try some of the shorter varieties like Albion Star, Pinocchio or Red Riding Hood.

If you get a chance to try any of these, I would love to know how they stand up, since they are recommended for your exact type of conditions.

Below is a photo of our tulips. We had purchased a couple of large bags of bulbs and I don't remember that they were a special variety. I will copy down the bulbs you suggested and see if I can find any.

http://groups.msn.com/MounseyFamilyHome/housepictures.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=201

I love the style of your house! The tulips look to me like Darwin's, but it is hard to tell from a picture. If you do find some, don't forget to let me know in the spring if they hold up in the wind. I did a search for a few of them and found them available on the internet. Don't know if that will help you or not.

Thanks for the compliment on my house Barbara. I think the front of it looks so plain with no flowers or anything. I have been trying to talk the hubby into some flower beds. Mums would love it there, it gets full sun all day. Will let you know about the tulips!

Connie,
There are so many things you can plant that love full sun. Why don't you plant some low flowering shrubs (like azaleas)and then fill in with bulbs, mums, etc. throughout the season. Then, as the flowers die back, you will always have the shrubs to break up the front of the house.

I live in "the woods," as we call it - heavily treed with not much sun. Fortunately, the bulbs all get sun when they need it because most of the trees are oaks and the bulbs bloom before the trees leaf out. I guess that's why I like spring bulbs so much; it is the one time during the year when I can have a lot of color. Of course, it tends to be yellow because just about everything planted is daffodils due to all of the critters.

We have been working on planting things. We put in 3 flower beds and 3 trees this year. There were only two really old beds of irises here when we moved in. This winter we are going to decide what we are going to do this spring. We also have a large garden so that takes up a bunch of time and I put up vegetables in the freezer and also can. Maybe we will do something in front of the house next year, I know one of the projects is building a bed around an old hand pump that I bought last spring.
http://groups.msn.com/MounseyFamilyHome/yard.msnw There are photos of what we did last spring. I need to take new photos and put "afters" up.

My husband would like some bulbs in our new, old house. This will be our last home other than possibly a retirement cabin in the mountains or at the beach someday. It was professionally landscaped beautifully. We have two large old pin oak trees on either side of our front guest parking area. They are surrounded by rather large beds with ground cover and liorope around the borders. There is room in front of the trees where the ground cover has not spread for some bulbs. What do you suggest? I'd like to shoot for color all season, not just daffodils and tulips. We also have mature azaleas, dogwood, magnolia, Indian hawthorne and other misc. shrubs as foundation plantings and on along both sides of the property. The yard is fairly small but packed with plants. I am open to suggestions and need some planting time guides. We live on the coastal plain of South Carolina. We have short, mild winters. Our daytime temperatures are still running in the 80s here, but we expect 50s to 60s for highs as a front moves in next week. Thank you for any help you can give.
DR

Wow, Connie, you have been very busy and have a lot of work ahead of you. I enjoyed your pictures and would love to see more as the gardens progress. I especially like the trellis that you are going to have honeysuckle grow on; what a great way to enter your yard.

Is Woody a Great Dane? I love dogs and have always had a soft spot for the big ones. We had an English Mastiff and she was wonderful. The only bad thing about big dogs is they have a shorter life span. Our Mastiff lived 9 years and we had to have her put down because she had a twisted stomach and was too old to have surgery; it really almost killed us. I now share my home with a 9 lb. rat terrier - quite a difference from a mastiff!