italian bulb gardens

Let flowering bulbs go wild, wild, wild in Italian gardens

Italian garden designers long for spring's arrival after a long grey winter. Indeed spring is enough to get everyone a little bit excited about the prospect of longer days, blue skies and some ... colour at last

When making a bulb-garden one can choose the classic, rather rigid stately home approach of planting the bulbs in blocks or lines to display the spring spectacle. Alternatively one can opt for the more informal, natural approach or, better still- try to combine the two in perfect harmony! Undoubtedly spring symbolizes the arrival of happier times, natural beauty and yellow sunshine and what better way could nature have chosen to display this wonderful time, than with wild flowering bulbs and wild flowers?

The Italian countryside offers us wild bulbs, such as wild anenomes, wild garlic, wild chrocus and a whole host of of wild flowers. A woodland walk, brushed with swathes of wild bulbs must be one of the most beautiful natural sights and it is all very simple to create and, of course ... totally ecological!

Some of these once natural spring-flowering bulbs have now been hybridized and modified into some magnificent flower forms and colors that are clearly very useful to the garden designer. No matter how beautiful cultivated bulbs can be, they still have some quite serious competition in nature

Most areas of waste-ground are home to amazing selection of bulbs and wild-flowers like wild onions, garlic, wild chive and other, rarer rhizomatous plants. , such as wild gladioli. Wild flower gardens can establish themselves in just 3 months and sustain indigenous ecosystems almost immediately.When these are combined with flowering bulbs. When we plant spring flowering bulbs, tuberous and rhizominous plants like hellebores, cyclamen and iris in Italian wild-flower meadows we can create some really interesting natural designs. There is a flower for every season and the display can last from spring through to autumn and all through the winter until the following spring!

Making ecological gardens that provide interest and color all year round is easier and cheaper than you may think!

Jonathan Radford.