Imagine you’re planning a holiday overseas. You wouldn’t wait until the very last minute to book your flight and pack your bags, would you?
Well, the same goes for gardeners when they want to do something beautiful for spring. They can’t afford to leave it to the very last minute; they need to get it sorted out months in advance.
Now is the time to act if you want to open your front door in spring and be greeted by beautiful flowers and fabulous fragrance. We can help make it happen.
Mixed Species Crocus is one of the tulips in the Symphony of Spring Collection.
We have teamed up with our horticultural retail partner Botanus, of Langley, B.C., a top plant mail-order firm, and are launching a set of six first-class flower bulb collections, each carefully composed to deliver wonderful colour and fragrance to your garden in spring.
We’ve worked out how to get the bulbs to your door at precisely the right time to plant. And we’re delighted to be able to bring you great savings of between 33 and 45 per cent on each of these exclusive collections.
It’s our way of not only getting our readers a bargain, but also to let you know how important you are to us.
The six collections being offered are English Garden Collection, Allium Allure Collection, Royal Velvet Hyacinth Collection, Symphony of Spring, Frosty Fringed Tulip Collection, and Marvellous Mini Bulb Collection.
The Symphony of Spring Collection consists of flowers that bloom from the start to the end of spring in a natural, seamless, progression of blooms that blend together like parts of a symphony, ending in a rousing crescendo.
Silverspring is in the Allium Allure Garden Collection.
Allium Allure is a collection I specifically asked for after seeing an amazing display of new and unusual alliums at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. I asked Botanus to track down some of the more exciting hybrids now being produced in Holland, and they came back with a first-rate list. I am especially thrilled to see this collection as alliums always make an impressive contribution to any garden.
Hyacinths have also been a long-time favourite of mine. I love to dot them through borders to add a dash of colour and fragrance in early spring. Our Royal Velvet Hyacinth Collection is a knockout selection of some of the best.
Our English Garden Collection is another winner, featuring some of the beautiful flowers you often find in English gardens in spring, especially bluebells, snowdrops and fritillaries.
The Frosty Fringed Tulip Collection features some of the finest late-spring blooming “fringed tulips” — ones with petals with highly decorative, frayed edges.
And the Marvellous Mini Bulb Collection is tailor-made for gardeners with rock or alpine gardens. The bulbs also will grow perfectly in containers.
Princess Irene is one of the tulips in our Symphony of Spring Collection. [Handout]
The flowers all appear on short stems, making them impervious to rain or wind and ideal for growing in small spaces.
This collection contains some new varieties of Iris reticulata from Ontario hybridizer Alan McMurtrie. This makes our collection unique and exclusive to our readers.
How difficult is it to plant bulbs? There is really nothing to it: make a hole, drop the bulb in, cover with soil, walk away, and you’re done. This is one of the easiest and most rewarding of garden projects.
In containers, bulbs need to be given more protection from extreme cold. They can easily handle a few degrees of frost but containers will need to be placed in protect areas over winter where temperatures will not dip too low below zero.
One clever technique is to use pieces of old garden hose placed vertically into containers before soil is added. As the temperature dips and the soil freezes, the pieces of hose will absorb the pressure of the expanded soil and prevent containers from cracking and bulbs from being squeezed too much.
HOW TO ORDER
To place your order go to Botanus.com. Your garden package will be delivered at the correct time for planting.
Allium Allure Collection
12 bulbs
Regular retail price: $55.95
Montreal Gazette price: $29.95
You save: 45 per cent
WHAT YOU GET
4 Allium ‘Eros’
3 Allium ‘Gladiator’
2 Allium ‘Mount Everest’
2 Allium ‘Red Mohican’
1 Allium ‘Silverspring’
You can never have enough of these members of the garlic/onion family; they are fantastic spring flowers that never fail to add to the beauty of the garden. In this collection, we have concentrated on bringing you more unusual varieties, ones not normally seen everywhere but ones that are nevertheless star performers.
They all bloom later in spring, which makes them a natural link between the flowers of spring and summer. Some are big and stately, such as ‘Gladiator’ and ‘Mount Everest,’ and should be used as accent pieces to add a striking architectural element to the centre of a border or bed.
Others are more novel and have an allure that comes from their uniqueness. ‘Silver Spring’ has white and pink flowers that smell of licorice. ‘Red Mohican’ has elongated tufts that also give off a light perfume.
This assortment will add to your allium collection and give you just as much pleasure as the ones you are already growing.
English Garden Collection
35 bulbs
Regular retail price: $49.95
Montreal Gazette price: $29.95
You save: 40 per cent
WHAT YOU GET
8 Camassia esculenta Quamash
6 Eranthis hyemalis
3 Fritillaria persica
10 Galanthus elwesii
8 Scilla nutans
Close your eyes and imagine you’re listening to Edward Elgar’s emotive Serenade for Strings. Think of paintings by Turner, poems by Wordsworth, architecture by Wren. This collection is the embodiment of that joyous spirit of enthusiasm and renewal, and pays homage to all things bright and beautiful.
In this unique collection you get gorgeous blue-flowered scilla and camassia, buttercup-yellow aconites, dainty snowdrops and stately, majestic purple fritillaria. They all work together to evoke a feeling of being in a quiet English country garden soon after winter has been banished and spring has made its happy return. The bluebells are true English bluebells, not the more common Spanish variety. The English ones are more delicate and have a shyer, side-leaning lilt.
Frosty Fringed Tulip Collection
20 bulbs
Regular retail price: $39.95
Montreal Gazette price: $24.95
You save: 38 per cent
WHAT YOU GET
4 ‘Cummins’ fringed tulips
4 ‘Daytona’ fringed tulips
4 ‘Fabio’ fringed tulips
4 ‘Huis ten Bosch’ fringed tulips
4 ‘Joint Division’ fringed tulips
Why are we calling these tulips “frosted?” Well, the flower petals do look a little as if their edges are made up of flakes of frost. Technically, they are better known as “fringed” tulips. Most bloom later in spring, although ‘Daytona’ is a bit of a speedster that likes to get a head start on the others and blooms earlier.
We’ve assembled a lovely rainbow mix of colours, from flaming red-orange to candy-floss pink to pristine white. Some are hard-to-get hybrids, directly imported from some of the best growers in the Netherlands. Fringed tulips add charm and a sense of frivolity and vitality to your spring garden. They also make first-class cut flowers, looking elegant in a vase on the coffee table in your living room.
Royal Velvet Hyacinth Collection
15 bulbs
Regular retail price: $39.95
Montreal Gazette price: $26.95
You save: 33 per cent
WHAT YOU GET
3 ‘Hollyhock’
3 ‘King Condro’
3 ‘Madame Sophie’
3 ‘Miss Saigon’
3 ‘Prince of Love’
A triumph of Dutch hybridizing, these exquisitely scented hyacinths are called “double-flowered” because the stately column of flowers are densely packed with twice as many petals as standard varieties.
What’s also remarkable about these extraordinary spring-flowering bulbs is their versatility. They can be grown in a variety of ways: dotted gracefully through a perennial border, scattered through a rockery or combined in containers for high impact on a doorstep or windowsill.
The range of colours here stretches from dark blue to soft pink to dazzling white. Some of them are top award-winners, singled out by the Royal Horticultural Society as star performers. Together, they made a stunning collection that can survive in your garden year after year.
Marvellous Mini Flower Bulb Collection
41 flower bulbs
Regular retail price: $32.95
Montreal Gazette price: $22.95
You save: 30 per cent
WHAT YOU GET
8 ‘Saxatilis’ mini botanical tulips
8 ‘Elka’ narcissus
8 ’Diamond Ring’ narcissus
5 Iris reticulata ‘Seabreeze’
12 ‘Cupido’ muscari
Here is proof that good things do indeed come in small packages. The idea here is to bring you flowers that will fit happily into small spaces but deliver a significant punch of colour in spring.
This exclusive assortment is packed with a high-class mix of 41 miniature, dwarf and rock garden tulips, narcissi, iris and muscari. You can sprinkle these into your rockery or dot them through a flower bed or perennial border, or use them in creative combinations in containers of various sizes.
The ‘Seabreeze’ iris is special, being a unique hybrid developed by Toronto plant breeder Alan McMurtrie, who has been hybridizing for the past 30 years.
Symphony of Spring Collection
46 bulbs
Regular retail price: $39.95
Montreal Gazette price: $24.95
You save: 38 per cent
WHAT YOU GET
6 ‘Princess Irene’ single early tulips
6 ’Purple Prince’ single early tulips
6 Allium ‘Purple Sensation‘
10 ‘Mount Hood’ narcissus
18 Mixed Species Crocus
Our most popular bestseller, this collection was first introduced in 2013 and sold out so fast we could not complete all the orders. We increased supply and the same thing happened the following years.
It is such a delightful mix of reliable favourites, and if you missed the chance to own it last year, here’s another opportunity. We’ve added a few new varieties to spice up the mix but the core idea remains the same: To deliver a sequence of great flowers that are geared to bloom from the start to the end of spring.
This symphony starts with a splattering of species crocus followed by some beautiful tulips and narcissus, and ending with the outstanding ‘Purple Sensation’ allium.
swhysall@postmedia.com