I hate planting bulbs!

It happens every year. Those glossy catalogues arrive from the bulb growers and I, for one, get immediately carried away. How beautiful X, Y and Z would look in our garden – and generally speaking they are not expensive.

So, Mrs GG and I sit down at the kitchen table and thumb through them, she squealing in delight at some of the photographs. I end up with a list and a bill as long as my arm. Remember this is a little exercise that has gone on twice a year at this particular house for 35 years.

It means that there is hardly a square inch of border that is not already jam-packed with bulbs of one variety or another.

Nevertheless, off goes our order and funds. Its only when they arrive that the stupidity of our actions comes home to roost. Fifty new daffodil bulbs. More than 100 tulips (Mrs GG particularly likes these). Snakeshead fritillaries (50). Wood Anemone (under the beech trees). Camassia (100 under the Cedar tree). Add to that dozens of delphinium, aubretia and campanula plants I’ve grown from seed and are yet to be planted out - somewhere..

I quickly gave up the task of trying to find some unoccupied territory in the borders. Most of the tulips have gone into containers. Bulb compost costs an arm and a leg. The daffs are in the lawn. But trying to dig a hole under the beech trees was a thankless task. The trees are old, very old and the oil beneath them like concrete. Using a long garden knife I located an area that seemed reasonably root free. Well, at least the blade went down a few inches. I watered it for two days to try and soften the soil. But goodness me, it was hard work. If the mice and squirrels leave them alone, they should look lovely.

The Camassia have not arrived yet and that is going to be a thankless task as under the Cedar tree is the rabbit trial ground for sharpening their claws and they will dig anything up. They are rude little monsters and don’t bother to run away when you approach them. When Annabel, our granddaughter, was young, she used to leave rude notes telling them to stop digging. Now, she has a border terrier, and when they come to visit Arthur knows precisely where to go. Anyway, back to the Camassia.

The experts say they need to go in with a bulb planter and be about six inches deep. 100 six-inch deep holes – that’s 50 feet - in concrete soil with a hand pushed planter. I’ll need a dram or two after that.

I though I’d finished the first wave of planting until I went into the greenhouse. I dropped something and under the staging was a cardboard box of 50 odd daffodil bulbs that were dug up in the early summer from a giant clump. It’ll have to be another hole in the lawn!

Happy Gardening!

The Grumpy Gardener