Spectacular Spring Flower Bed Design Classes

Spectacular Spring Flower Bed Design Classes

August 10, 17, 24, and 31 -- 2:00-4:00 pm

September 14, 21, and 28 -- 10:00 am-12:30 pm or 6:00 pm-8:30 pm

Cost: $40.00(for the 3 week course)

Instructor: Larry Sagers

-----------------

Wonderful spring flower gardens don't just happen. They are created by gardeners who know what to plant in the fall. Learn to choose the bulbs, winter annuals, biennials and spring blooming perennials that will create the wonderful, showy gardens you see here and at Temple Square. Learn how to plan and plant similar flowerbeds in your own landscape.

Tulips, daffodils and other spring flowers bring visions of traditional Dutch landscapes. But you don't have to book a trip abroad to enjoy millions of flowers as spring unfolds. Holland has more windmills and canals, but the largest bulb farms in the world are in the United States.

The place is Washington's Skagit Valley, 60 miles north of Seattle. This picturesque setting is in a rich agricultural valley that has just the right combination of soil, water and climate to grow spring bulbs.

Travelers in general, and people who love to garden in particular, will enjoy the farms, the blooming fields and, most of all, the flowers. Throughout the winter these silent miracles develop beneath the soil's surface.

Deep inside the fleshy bulbs are tiny flowers that patiently grow and finally erupt in a show of spring colors. I've been to the Skagit (rhymes with gadget) Valley more than once and must admit that timing is everything.

I first went in the fall. It was a professional visit where I watched digging, sorting and planting. That trip did little to prepare me for future visits during the spectacular spring bloom season. I returned in the spring to see flowers bursting forth from the rich brown earth.

It's hard to describe hundreds of acres of bulbs in splendid bloom. Some fields have more than 200,000 blooms per acre.

At the height of the season, millions of blossoms are showing throughout the countryside. The bulbs are grown to sell, not to attract tourists. But attract tourists, they do. Tulip farms started sprouting the Skagit Valley in 1906. The industry got a boost in 1926 when the United States placed an embargo on imported bulbs. To counteract the embargo, Dutch immigrants moved to the Pacific Northwest and established bulb farms.

The embargo continued until after World War II. When the government finally lifted the ban, competition drove many smaller producers out of business. Producing bulbs isn't easy. Diseases become a problem when you grow the same plants in the same space year after year. Petals from spent blooms are potential disease hazards.

For these and other reasons, mechanical toppers shear off the blossoms before they've finished blooming. This causes a great deal of consternation to tourists. While I understood the reasons, I must admit that watching the decapitation of thousands of prime flowers was difficult.

Growers rotate the fields on a strict schedule to prevent disease. Each field is planted only every four to five years, so the location of the bulbs changes from year to year. Stop at the display gardens mentioned below to pick up current maps of the growing areas.

Flower picking usually starts in late March but varies according to weather conditions. Bulbs remain in the ground until the foliage dies in the summer. Bulb farmers then dig, sort, package and sell them for planting throughout the world. They replant some of them to form new bulbs for the following year.

Although there are many attractions and other exciting events each year in the valley, nothing compares with tulip time. The brilliant flowers are magnificent as they bloom throughout the early spring. Flower "beds" take on a new meaning when they are comprised of hundreds of acres and millions of blossoms.

In Utah, spring gardens are one of our most welcome treats. After a dark and dreary winter, the spring landscape feels like the Earth is being refreshed and renewed as tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and other spring bulbs burst into color.

Ironically, if you wait until spring to start your garden, you will be sadly disappointed in the outcome. Bulbs must go through a mandatory chilling process to get them to bloom. Plant unchilled bulbs in the spring and the best you can hope for are a few straggly leaves poking through the ground where you expected the blooms to be.

Designing spring flower beds takes time and expertise. When you plant bulbs, you are designing blind — that is, you are planting dried up "stems" that look more like dried onions than healthy bulbs that will make beautiful flowers.

As you plant, you cannot determine the size, the color or the bloom time of the flower. While that might not be serious if you want only a few undetermined colors of tulips to bloom sometime during the spring, you don't have much of a problem.

On the other hand, if you want a flower bed that neighbors stop and take pictures of and then ask you how you made those flowers grow so well, you have to plan your beds more carefully.

While all of the bulbs are spectacular when they bloom, the sad fact is they look bad much longer than they look good. They have somewhat interesting leaves as they grow, but the blooms are only going to look great for a couple of weeks.

You can help your spring garden look good longer by orchestrating your bloom time. Sequence the bloom starts by selecting different kinds of bulbs. The first bulbs to bloom are the snowdrops and crocus, then many others follow. It is important to remember that there are early, mid- and late-season daffodils and a similar range of tulips that provide an extended bloom season.

Tulip varieties now number in the hundreds. They range in size from small-species flowers to large hybrids that you can put your fist inside. Colors are almost endless and include everything except jet black and true blue.

Daffodils also have varying sizes and colors, although the chromatic range is not nearly as diverse.

Another important part of designing showy spring bulb plantings is to buy the right size bulb. While you might think all bulbs are alike, the size of the bulb strongly influences the size of the blossom. Cheap bargain-basement bulbs are not likely to give a worthy show.

Another mistake many gardeners make is not planting their bulbs deep enough. If the bulbs are not deep enough, they do not stay in the soil. Always plant them at least three times the diameter of the bulb — but if they are where they freeze and thaw repeatedly, plant them even deeper.

All bulbs prefer rich, deep, well-drained soil but will grow in most any soil. Avoid heavy wet soil that will not drain. It quickly causes bulbs to rot. If your soil is too heavy or the water table so high that it affects the bulb growth, consider putting them in raised beds or adding coarse organic material to improve the growing conditions.

One last word of advice: Don't wait too long.