Posts tagged bulbs

Garden Visits: Folmer’s Botanical Gardens

August 21, 2013 · Filed under bulbs, garden visits · Tagged , , , , ,

I have wanted to visit Folmer’s Botanical Gardens in Walkerton for years, but it never worked out. This garden was featured in Canadian Garden magazine a few years ago and I became even more determined to get there. However this spring, I finally succeeded. And I wish I had made more of an effort because I loved it.  I got so inspired, I feel like I need to buy thousands of Anamone blanda bulbs this fall.

Certainly need me a display like this,

and this

what about this.

Gorgeous!!

Brian Folmer has been passionate about gardening since he was 15 and studied Landscape Architecture at the University of Guelph.  in 1996 he purchased 108 acres and began planning a garden centre, garden design and display gardens.  According to their website, they are the largest privately owned botanical gardens in southwestern Ontario.  There is over 30 acres of display gardens, both formal and informal.

Gates,

I need gates,

just like these ones.

And a gazebo,

all good.

Now this I could do,

I certainly have enough muscari, just need to put a path in.

And lots and lots of spring bulbs.

Vistas,

we got vistas for days, (need to work on mine, it is one of my favourite design features).

And did I mention the serviceberry allee,

certainly longer then mine, and with single trunk specimens, rather then multi trunked,

it gave me lots of hope that mine will one day be as gorgeous. Love the vistas and focal points in every direction.

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In The Green

March 4, 2010 · Filed under Random Thoughts · Tagged , , , ,

No, I did not win the lottery, although the above title usually does refer to money. But in this case I am referring to snowdrops.

I was reading an English garden blog the other day and drooling over her pictures of the snowdrops in her border. Dear Reader, she had thousands. OMG! how could I possibly achieve this look in my lifetime, (ok, forget the lifetime, I want to achieve it in the next two years).  She wrote that she had planted 2000 bulbs and was thinking of purchasing more “in the green”.  And then Sylvia (who all Blotanists know and love) wrote a letter on Tulips In The Woods blog about her snowdrops.  Now I am even more greedy!

Now, every UK gardener knows what this is, but it is not common at all for North Americans. In fact, I do not even know if you can purchase them this way at all. But, you can buy snowdrops, (as well as bluebells, aconite and some crocus) “in the green” or growing. They are dug up and shipped in the spring, when they have roots and leaves. Snowdrops settle into your garden so much easier at this stage, they hate being dried out.

When I was moaning to Julie about the lack of North American (at least Canadian) doing this, she was appalled.   To quote, “how are you ever going to get them to grow”. But then Julie had a brilliant idea, she suggested advertising for gardeners who might be able to spare some.

So if you, or you know of anyway one who would be interested in selling some snowdrops, please let me know.  Obviously, they would have to be in Canada, such a headache importing from the US or overseas. I am so hoping to have (one day) the kind of show that you can see in the Rococo Garden Painswick.

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Bulb-mania

October 21, 2009 · Filed under bulbs, design · Tagged

 Ok, I have a problem. Actually, it is a serious illness. I cannot resist buying bulbs.

Shoot me now.

gardenOct09 126

This is only a few packages that I purchased this week (on sale, yay) and does not include the mail order bulbs that were not in pretty packages.

So far this year, (and until the ground freezes, and even then, I might still be sucked into buying more) I have purchased,

100 scilla siberica                              12 crocus-Flower Record

50 chionoboxa luciliae                    12 crocus-Grand Maitre

100 chionodoxa forbesii                 20 Crocus-Zwanenburg Bronze

40 anamone blanda                           4 Camassia

7 allium gladiator                               1 Fritillaria imperalis-orange(just to test it)

4 allium christophii                           25 winter aconites

12 daff-tahati

5 d. orangerie

10 d. pipit

10 d red devon

15 D. -Accent

15 D.-Bell Song

15 D.-Golden Ducats

 

This numbers 457  and does not include the 3 colchicums that I purchased the beginning of Sept. I am on an upward spiral, I only planted 245 in 2008,  225 in 2007 and  127 in 2006.

Now, these are bulbs that I paid good money for and purchased in the autumn. It does not include all the free forced bulbs that I received from work, all the bulbs that were given to me by my mum, and the very few bulbs that were here when we purchased the house.

Why, oh why, when you add all these up, does it look like nothing in the garden. How many bulbs does a garden need before it starts to look full?

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Bulbilicious!

September 14, 2009 · Filed under bulbs, Random Thoughts · Tagged , , ,

Yummy! In Toronto, we have “Summerlicious” and “Winterlicious”.  It takes place during the slower times in a restaurant, and was planned to bring in more business.  You get a prix fixe for a set price and a lot of very expensive restaurants participate. For a lot of them, it is the only way, you will ever be able to afford to eat there.

For me,  I need bulbilicious. I could never afford to plant the quantities of bulbs that I would want to in my garden, after all how much would it be for 10,000 scillas, thousands of daffs, millions of crocus, etc.  I want what the English have. I want a snowdrop wood, where all you see are yard after yard of snowdrops, crocus lawns, bluebell woods.  In England, they will plant them in the thousands and then give it 100 years or so, it will be spectacular. I want to see Wordsworth vision of daffodils in my back yard.

Whats a poor girl to do? In Canada, we do not have the huge number of mail order bulb companies that England and The United States have.                                                      

I was reading  Gwendolyn’s Garden blog and she was talking about ordering bulbs,,   so cheap from www.Colorblends.com, a wholesale mail order company.

 So, I went on line and found Flower Bulbs R Us.  This is the cheapest place that I could find in Canada. If anyone knows someone cheaper, please let me know.  I did a cost comparison,  Flower Bulbs R Us to ColorBlends.  OK, there is no comparison. Scilla -FBRUS  1000/$199.60  Colorblends 1000/$120.00,  Frit melagris  FBRUS 1000/197.60 CB 1000/145.00,  Chionodoxa FBRUS 1000/115.00  CB 1000/95.00 .

 If I bought all 3000 bulbs (which is the quantities that I would need in order to achieve my dream, well, semi-achieve), FBRUS $512.20 and CB $360.00, that is a difference of $152.20.

Now don’t think that I am slagging FBRUS, they are quite a bit cheaper than all the other mail order bulb companies in Canada.  So, once again I am ordering from them, just not in the quantities that I would be if I could order from Colorblends.

The dream will just take longer!

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