It never hurts to plan ahead for what you want in your garden. You can work with nature when choosing what to plant and when. If you want to fill your garden with colour next spring, plant bulbs during October and November, before the first frost. Some of the best options include daffodils, tulips, hyacinth, alliums, muscari and irises.

You will see these flowers available earlier and earlier every year in local supermarkets and garden centres. But that’s not because nature has changed, it’s a commerce thing where stores have shelf space they want to fill. Just because you see these items on sale earlier in the year doesn’t mean you should be planting them earlier.

You can also save yourself a fortune by planting bulbs at the right time and working with nature. Rather than buying one ready to flower in a pot for €8 in March, you can buy a pack full for €2 or €3 and plant them in the winter ready to flower in spring.

Read more: Top gardener Peter Dowdall explains what common hanging basket mistakes cause flowers to die

If you’ve previously planted spring bulbs and left them in the ground, the chances are they’re going to be fine. They’re just going to grow again naturally and automatically without any input from you.

The only thing to watch for is that some are less reliable than others; for example, tulips are not as hardy as daffodils. So if you planted 50 bulbs last year, you might get 40 flowers this year and the following year you might only get 20. So I will always plant a fresh batch of tulips each year to help replenish them.

I personally like to add some new bulbs every year no matter what. Firstly, you’re making the garden more interesting and colourful but, also, buying these bulbs in the winter is as cheap as chips as they will literally cost you cents. It is a very affordable and easy way to bring vibrancy into the garden, especially in today’s climate where everyone is watching their spending.

A good rule of thumb for planting is to place bulbs about twice the height of the bulb under the ground. So in other words, small bulbs like a crocus might only be a quarter of an inch in height so you’re only going an inch under the ground. Whereas other flowers like aluminums could be six inches in height so they will need 12 inches under the ground.

Most bulbs prefer well drained soil, so if your soil is heavy clay, dig in lots of horticultural grit before planting your bulbs, or instead, plant them in containers filled with a 50/50 mix of grit and peat-free compost.

Tulips – which I already mentioned do not come back reliably every year – tend to be better planted as late as January and ideally after we’ve already had a few frosts. The deeper you plant them, the more likely they are to flower again in successive years.

Colour Palette

I’m often asked about what colour scheme to follow when you’re choosing your planting for the year ahead and the answer is completely personal. You might opt to stick to one complete colour scheme, and have everything white, blue, pink, etc. That is very doable with a good mixture of tulips and crocus to get that one colour palette.

In my own garden I use nearly all white flowers, with white crocus, daffodils and tulips which looks fabulous right into May when the summer perennials start taking over. But there’s no right or wrong way and equally you could choose a complete mixture, and enjoy a symphony of colours from yellows, reds, blues, oranges and whites.

Just consider what you want before you buy and have a plan in mind for your colour scheme and what you’re hoping to achieve.

In The Shade

Most bulbs are very forgiving. However, not everything will grow in shady gardens. Tulips won’t do well in shade, nor will your lower daffodils. But flowers like crocus and grey pious do well out of the sun.

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