Floral Bewilderment

I am trying to come to a decision about my bulb order. Not an easy thing to do. I have bought books, poured over catalogues, played on the internet in an attempt to finally pin down what it is I am looking for. I know that I want daffodils, tulips and some crocus. However, it is only recently that I realised quite what an abundance of choice that there is!

Also, with my little garden I don’t want to overwhelm the situation. I don’t have big borders, in fact only one space out the back, I want to dig a new one, so I will also be having a lot of pots. Then out at the front I need to decide whether to go for daffodils or tulips as I don’t think you can really mix them up in the one border. I think that might look all a bit wrong. At the back I’m not anticipating a problem as the pots can all be different. The majority of the daffodils will be planted in the bank and just left au naturel as it were, as will the crocus just peaking out of the grass.

I feel the tulips though will need slightly more formal planting, so they will go in the beds and the majority of the planters! Well there you go. Simply by discussing it here I seem to have a way to go.

I think I will have both the crocus varieties that I have here and I definitely want the Jenny daffodils as they are named after my Mother, or so I like to think. The others I am all open to ideas on really. I do think that the purple and white colour plan with the tulips is the way to go at the moment though. I don’t want everything to get too complicated and G has had a blue Summer garden this year so I want to indulge my need for purple this Spring.

I’m also a bit sad as not only have I gone on whether I like the look of the flowers I have also been drawn to the names of them.One that I loved that I haven’t gone for because I don’t think it matches the scheme at all is this. It’s called Christmas Dream, what a fabulous name is that! I’m not really sure why though. As fuchsia pink doesn’t really conjure up the idea of roaring fires and chestnuts to me.

I also fell in love with this one to the right called Ballade. Not for it’s name but for the shape of it. I think for the moment though I am going to go with the more traditional tulip shapes and make sure that I know what I am doing before I try to experiment with form as well as colour combinations.

I know that by just picking purple and white I am playing it safe. After reading Sarah Raven’s book, recommended by the lovely and helpful Jane and in my sidebar at the moment, I was amazed by the vibrant choices she makes, much like Jane herself does. Colours that should seemingly clash in the garden at least to my mind, look incredible I just wish I had the courage to make such bold decisions and a larger garden to them justice.

For the time being though I am more than content with my little patch and trying to plan that is headache enough without having to try and think my way through an even more labyrinthine planning exercise!