Both Alan and I enjoy gardening but Alan’s forte is the vegetable garden, so I began experimenting with flowers.
Name: Gemma and Alan, a couple of ex-Aucklanders chasing ‘the good life’
Location: North Canterbury
Garden size: Cut flower garden - two 8x1m beds and two 11x1m beds
Follow me: @lobrook.farm
A whopping 670 bulbs were planted in winter 2023.
I grow them because they are beautiful, and I enjoy spending an hour here or there in the evenings tending to them. Especially when the sun is setting behind the flower beds, it makes for stunning light bouncing off the flowers.
Bulbs are such an easy, low maintenance way of having a beautiful spring display. Our favourite flowers to grow in spring are tulips and daffodils. We have daffodils scattered in little groups under the fruit trees, and tulips in our cut flower beds. The daffodils come up first and are a nice welcome to spring. Last season I also added peonies to the cutting garden. In summer we grow sunflowers, then dahlias late summer and blooming into autumn.
Autumn is the best time to plant for a spring show. I order our bulbs in April and plant them out in May. I decide what to plant based on what we can fit in the garden beds. In 2023 we had to expand the garden beds because I wanted to try lots of different varieties of tulips. Apart from having to plant the bulbs twice because the escapee pigs dug them up, and being attacked by wayward free range chickens who wanted to get into the fresh garden beds, it was successful because they still came through and put on a spring show. A testament to just how hardy they are!
I love filling the house with cut flowers that I have grown, and a vase in the guest room always goes down great when friends and family come to stay. They also make a great thank-you gift for the neighbours when you need to borrow things like butter after running out mid-baking! We did have rather a lot of spring flowers last season, so we are thinking next season we might need to set up a wee roadside stall to share the joy!
A good white bloom is versatile and complements a mix of colours in a bouquet.
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