Those Welcome Harbingers of Spring
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Even a late snowfall can’t keep these spring flowering bulbs down; crocuses are tough, yet look so fragile.
They are prolific spreaders, gradually covering, with grace and a good attitude, a good area.
A small package of bulbs can be a good investment, as each bulb in time will split into a handful or two.
I have seen them planted into a lawn at the entrance to a driveway self seed and spread into a little piece of heaven in only a few years.
The glorious purple egg shaped blooms are typically what you see, but there are other types too.
Tiny, frail looking pink Firefly crocuses, or the Gypsy variety will offer their tiny flowers to the sun.
They only bloom in full sun, and they are not concerned with competition from shrubs.
Plant them under a blooming Chaeonomales, the flowering quince, or a grafted lilac. They’ll be finished blooming long before the leaves come out on the shrubs.
The leaves are striped with silver, and grow quite tall after the flowering sequence.
Don’t pull these out, they need them to ripen and die back to be able to produce another show of flowers next spring.
The drought that my garden experiences through the summer is necessary to ripen the bulbs.
If you want to move them, or create another patch, mark the clump and dig it up after the foliage has died back. They will be surprisingly deep in the soil, so make sure you don’t accidentally cut the bulbs in half.
