Bulbs: What new bulbs are you planting and where did you get them?, 1 by gemini_sage

gemini_sage wrote:
Jill, I agree about that pink-apricot not playing well with most yellows. I noticed light blue hyacinths aren't available like they used to be, and that's been bugging me. Sky Jacket was the one often offered, but nobody has it this year. That's why I don't use strong yellows in 60-70% of the garden. Since I do love lots of colors, but have to make it look right to my eye, I've striven to create a gradual transition of changing color pallets as you move through the garden.

I recall reading that Gertrude Jekyll designed her gardens with primarily cool colors through the middle of the garden, and introduced warm tones toward the ends. I'm not exactly doing that, but the garden at the entrance of the house is all cool colors, primarily purples, lavender, mauve, blues, and pinks. I call that part "Jan's Garden" because it is inspired by and a memorial to a dear friend who lived in this house before I did (and died here). Those were her "signature colors", and I loved the garden so much it inspired me to paint the house lavender with purple trim!

From there the path moves toward the garden facing west I call the "sunset garden", where I bring in other pastels first, incorporating peach and apricot with the cool colors, and then brighter tones of coral and salmon. That's where I use some soft yellow in the mix, but no strong gold.

Next is the pink bed, and from there the "sky garden" of blue, yellow, and white where I start bringing in brighter yellows. I love seeing from various angles the sky garden and pink bed together- pink, blue, and yellow are so happy and springy!

That leads to the garden of fire colors, the only place I use strong gold, along with orange and signal red. The obsessive collector in me collides with the floral designer and sometimes I drive myself nuts, LOL.

Donna, that is so surprising to me that those triandus daffs didn't perform for you. Next summer I'll be dividing some Thalia and Petrel, both wonderful performers for me. I'll send you some bulbs and let's see how those do! I had a similar experience with 'Weena', a white large cup from Brent and Becky's that they listed under trumpets with the explanation that they believed it belonged in the trumpet class but the powers that be reclassified it as large cup division. It was okay year 1, and didn't return after that. I rarely have that happen with a daffodil- I think that was a first.

My Petrel clump has done something interesting- a sport has formed! The sport has a doubled cup, and now is more plentiful than the original- it seems to be more vigorous. For a while I couldn't figure out what was going on, and thought I must have forgotten what I had. Kept searching for double cupped triandus daffs as old as mine have to be, but came up blank. Last spring I saw the single, original blooms in the mix and realized what had happened.

I've seen where various trumpets have been moved to the large cup division, I wonder if that happened with Vie en Rose?

And Donna, I love your combos! How long have you perpetuated your tulips? I just finished planting a blend of Darwin hybrids from Colorblends called "Gentle Giants", a mix of pink, peach, and salmon, and a blend of rose shades of late singles they called "French blend- rose". They had indeed increased, because I planted 100 Gentle Giants and bagged 30 for for some friends and had started out with 100 last year.

Here's the Gentle Giants blend and the French blend- rose