Jenny Rose Carey has written an international guide about what bulbs might suit your garden, how to plant them, design ideas, green tips and species and variety ideas.
Bulbs generally seem the easiest thing to plant. Stick them in and leave them. Hope they flower and then hope they flower the next year. Is there more to it than that? Carey suggests there is, and she's right.
Trends for a start. Carey, a former director at Pennsylvania Horticultural Society's Meadowbrook Farm, says grow what you love, rather than follow the trend for dahlias, or snowdrops.
Wildlife-friendly tips are to choose natives in a wide variety of shapes, in family groups. Seasonality is a thing. Plant in autumn and spring for maximum bulb life.
Design ideas: work out which will be tall (eg alliums) and stick them at the back. Complementary low-growers such as salvias might look good planted around them.
From camassia to zantedeschia, they're all profiled across 347 colourful pages, which cover every aspect of growing bulbs that you can imagine.
The book, mainly photographed at Northview, her 4.5 acre garden in Pennsylvania, is beautifully presented and opens your eyes to a world of bulbs where digging deeper reaps surprising rewards.
