Bulbs on full-beam

There's more to spring planting than daffs and tulips. And now's the time to buy something a little more adventurous. By Ursula Buchan

YEARS AGO, I worked with a gardener whose response to anything unusual in the garden was always: "Plants are strange things, you know." Although, as you can imagine, this mantra had the power to set my teeth on edge if too often repeated in the course of a day, even at the time I could see that he had a point.

I am conscious at the moment, as I begin to make lists of flowering spring bulbs to buy, how strange it is that a physiological response to adverse climatic conditions has the effect of giving us so much pleasure in the garden. Yet the fact that many bulbs are genetically primed to die down in summer, retreating to underground storage organs at a time, in their native habitats, when the soil is too dry for growth and perhaps the sun too fierce, means that we experience each spring a real thrill - never blunted by familiarity - as their leaves and flowers appear. (This is the same thrill we felt in early childhood when first we dibbled a hole in the ground to bury a dead-looking seed, and then watched the round leaves of a radish sprout.)

If you look in bulb nursery catalogues or the displays in garden centres in the next few weeks, you will not help but be impressed by the sheer range and ubiquity of the great bulb triumvirate of tulip, daffodil and crocus. However, there are probably a score of other hardy genera which deserve close consideration as well, for they are capable of providing quite as much versatility of use, if not perhaps the range of colour.

Some provide electrifying effects in pots, borders or rockeries, while others still can be naturalised in grass, insinuated under a deciduous hedge, or even planted in the shade of trees. In effect, we can use the capacity of bulbs to retreat when conditions become adverse to our great advantage. I am thinking in particular of Erythronium, Ixiolirion, Fritillaria and Hermodactylus, although I would always try to find a spot for Ipheion, Brodiaea, Puschkinia, Ranunculus and Oxalis adenophylla as well.

I am a great fan of the so-called "dog's tooth violets" or erythroniums. These have distinctive, elegant flowers which are composed of a number of outspread, reflexed petals, making a flower shape not unlike the roof of a Japanese pagoda (which explains why one of the finest, a large-flowered yellow, is called Pagoda). They come in other colours too: pink, white, and mauve according to species or variety, and all have two broad, fleshy, marbled or mottled leaves. One of the easiest to establish and grow is the European species, Erythronium dens-canis (ha, "dog's tooth"), which has mauve flowers with darker hearts to them, and green and purple-brown marbled leaves. Erythroniums mostly originate from meadows or woodland either in Europe or the United States, so are naturally suited for light shade under deciduous trees and shrubs or in short grass, provided that you can give them a fertile, organic-matter rich soil. The strange tubers (which genuinely do look like dog's teeth, albeit unbrushed) are best planted immediately you get hold of them, as they suffer if they dry out. Indeed, if you have a friend who grows them, I suggest you beg a few, rather than going out to buy them.

Also suitable for short grass in moisture-retaining soil, but in sun this time, is Fritillaria meleagris, the familiar and quite delightful 'Snakeshead Fritillary'. Less well-known but just as garden-worthy is a Siberian relation called F. pallidiflora. In early summer, this has 30cm-tall stems of almost rectangular flowers, which hang down like meleagris, but are a rather satisfying pale yellow, with just a hint of brown about them. Coming as it does from Siberia, it is as hardy as a husky, but it does appreciate a cool spot in semi-shade. If you are lucky it will seed around, so keep an eye out for thin, sword-shaped leaves when you are weeding.

Out on the rock garden, raised bed, or well-drained border, in the full glare of the sun, you could try Ixiolirion tartaricum (syn. pallasii), which is hardy, but likes to be baked in summer.

It grows to about 25cm tall and has loose heads of up to 10 blue flowers, with a darker stripe down each petal, in late spring and early summer. In wet districts, the bulbs will need protecting in winter with a dry mulch, such as composted bark.

Interesting, rather than attractive, may be the mot juste for Hermodactylus tuberosus, the 'Widow Iris'. This tuberous relation of the iris does best in a sunny wall bed or well-drained border, and is helped if the dormant tubers are protected by glass during very wet summers.

The flowers are scented, and the inner segments a yellowish-green, the colour of cooked artichoke heart, while the outer ones are a velvety deep brown, which looks black from a distance, and presumably once reminded someone of the stuff of a Victorian widow's gown.

A very odd plant which confirms to me (mute, not expressed, of course) that plants are incredibly strange things, you know.