Planting Old Friends / Bulbs needn't be new varieties to be dazzling ALL EDITIONS

FALL IS THAT buoyantly expectant time of the year when we plant bulbs in the cold, bare ground, confident that once again they will survive ice and snow to sprout and flower in the spring. As always, garden centers and bulb catalogs are brimming over with options, putting us in the shoes of a child...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNewsday
Main Author Charles Fenyvesi. Charles Fenyvesi wrote this for The Washington Post. Irene Virag is on special assignment. Her column is on hiatus
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 04.11.1999
EditionCombined editions
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Summary:FALL IS THAT buoyantly expectant time of the year when we plant bulbs in the cold, bare ground, confident that once again they will survive ice and snow to sprout and flower in the spring. As always, garden centers and bulb catalogs are brimming over with options, putting us in the shoes of a child in a candy store. Some of us may have problems imagining what new forms hybridizers will give spring-flowering bulbs a few years or decades hence. And we have an even harder time envisioning what wondrous new worlds botanists will coax out of bulbs that are now known only in the wild. Introduced around 1939, it is still a star: compact in form, less than 12 inches tall. Stems are stout enough to avoid storm damage and each offers several blooms in midseason. When cut, they stay fresh in a vase for up to a week.