Celebrate Naturalizing Bulbs in the Winter Garden - Part 1

Celebrate Naturalizing Bulbs in the Winter Garden - Part 1

By Amy Sanderson, Doris Page Winter Garden Volunteer

Sometimes when people visit the Doris Page Winter Garden in July, September, or even December, they are underwhelmed.

I understand; sometimes in the depths of my annual July-induced despair, I too fuss over the bare soil and worry we should undertake more renovations, should plant not just more plants but more closely together, should spread tonnes more mulch, or perhaps we should let the ground- covers take over so there’s something.

When I reach that point, I like to take a walk through one of the many other gardens at HCP, veritably bursting with summer colour, because I remember that, come February, it is our garden that is the one to visit.

As if by magic, our quiet banks are painted over with the silvery green and white of snowdrops, the filagree leaves and delicate petals of Anemone nemorosa, clumps and clusters of cyclamen. Now is the time to wander the Winter Garden, delighting over our good fortune and the foresight of all the gardeners before us.

My favourite luxury of visiting and volunteering at HCP is precisely to have access to a winter garden. A garden where we specifically adapt or disregard common gardening wisdom to celebrate colour and flowers in the colder months when they are most needed. Do you need to cut back hellebore and epimedium foliage? No, but we do, so you can see the blooms to their best advantage. We rake leaves, and mulch only every few years, in order to allow the tens of thousands of small bulbs that have naturalized through the garden a chance to flower uninhibited and for their seeds to reach the soil so that we might have even more.