It is time now to get down to the serious business of buying bulbs. Summer is ebbing away, the Monarch butterflies are massing for their epic flight to warmer climes, and the stores have already had their Halloween displays out for a month. The bulb catalogs hit the doorsteps in August and the garden centers have mounted their bulb displays. The hardest part is choosing.
If you stick to the garden centers, your choices are easier. In the last ten or fifteen years, most of them have edited their selections of spring-flowering bulbs so that there are fewer varieties in each category. Mass merchandisers edit even more strenuously.
For the best selection, you have to go to catalog/online vendors.
But, as Hamlet says, “there’s the rub.” The catalogs offer an abundance of selections and that abundance increases if you go online. Staring at all those full-color illustrations of jaw-dropping spring flowers will make you go glassy-eyed after about twenty minutes. Every gardener has his or her own way of dealing with this problem, but it’s safe to say that many of us will deal with it by choosing more bulbs than we can afford or have time to plant
This year I am narrowing my search to scented varieties in every category, narrowing the hundreds of possibilities down to mere scores of choices. The following are some “best bets” for spring fragrance.
Early Spring Bloomers:
Some of these are so small that you have to plant masses of them or assemble bouquets to really notice the fragrance. Still, even a whiff of something pleasant is welcome after a long, stale-smelling winter. In the crocus realm, I have always loved Crocus chrysanthus ‘Snow Bunting’. It has white petals and large golden stamens. Crocus biflorus ‘Purity’, another, white-flowered variety, is also fragrant. Crocuses in other colors seem to have less scent, but if you mix in enough white ones, you can refresh your senses with color and fragrance.
Galanthus or snowdrops smell wonderful. Admittedly, if you want to get a real appreciation for snowdrop fragrance or the minute differences among varieties, you should get down on your belly in the wet spring grass. For something that is a little more visible than ordinary Galanthus nivalis, try the Elwes snowdrop, Galanthus elwesii. These are about twice or three times the size of the nivalis species and just as fragrant. You can keep your belly dry while picking a few of them to make a nice bouquet.
Daffodils:
Jonquilla Narcissi or jonquils are small to medium-size daffodils that bear two or three flowers on each slender stem. Most of them are fragrant. Traditional favorites in this category include little ‘Baby Moon’, which grows only seven inches tall and has yellow flowers; the beautiful ‘Curlew’, with a white perianth and elongated ivory trumpet and ‘Dickcissel’, with a light yellow perianth and darker yellow cup. For those in USDA Zone 6, plant jonquillas in a sheltered spot and mulch well. North of Zone 6, consider raising them in pots.
Among my favorites for fragrance are members is the Poeticus or Poet’s narcissus group. The most famous of these is ‘Pheasant’s Eye’, beloved by a real poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. ‘Pheasant’s Eye’ has a small, greenish cup edged with a red-orange stripe. The petals are white and slightly reflexed or back-swept. In addition to its other virtues, this poeticus narcissus is wonderful for naturalizing. The double pheasant’s eye, Alba plenus odoratus, documented since 1601, is white, fluffy and extremely fragrant.
Tulips
Tulips are the showgirls of the bulb world. For fragrance try the double pink, powder-puffy ‘Angelique’, which is universally planted and loved. The orange ‘Princess Irene’ is stunning to behold with its purplish flames. Its double-flowered offspring, ‘Orange Princess’ has the same colors and fragrance. The yellow and red ‘Keizerskroon’ is an heirloom from 1750 that is still lighting up gardens worldwide and exudes a sweet fragrance. The double yellow ‘Monte Carlo’ and the pale pink and white ‘Montreux’ are also scented.
Any discussion of fragrance in the spring garden is incomplete without hyacinths. No matter what color or variety you buy, you are guaranteed a noseful of joy come spring. I always buy as many as I can afford—plenty for the flowerbeds and a few for forcing.
If you go through the catalogs and websites with a careful eye, you can find lots of fragrant spring bloomers. Heirlooms abound at Old House Gardens, 536 Third Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48103, (734) 995-1486; www.oldhousegardens.com. Catalog $2.00. Selection and quality come together at John Scheepers, Inc., 23 Tulip Drive, Bantam, Connecticut 06750, (860) 567-0838. Free catalog. Another excellent source is Brent and Becky’s Bulbs, 7900 Daffodil Lane, Gloucester, VA 23061, (804) 693-3966; www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com. Free catalog.