Welcome to The Bulb Project blog -- To help make this site even better, we encourage you to share how you've used or adapted activities, ideas for new activities and other bulb news and information. Depending on your preference, there are several ways for you to join in the discussions.
The "Share Ideas" blog page displays posts chronologically below, but you can also view them by category or date from the left sidebar.
Daffodils featured on ‘Year of the Tiger’ stamp
To celebrate today’s dawn of the Chinese New Year — the Year of the Tiger — the U.S. Postal Service has issued a stamp featuring five blooming daffodils.
Daffodils — or Narcissus as they are more properly known around the world — play a big role in Chinese culture, as well. To find out more (and see a tea set made from daffodil bulbs), read Stamp Out Narcissus at the Human Flower Project website.
Submitted on: February 14, 2010
By: Craig Cramer
Topic: General | Add Comment (0) »
Bulb quilt planted at Myers Elementary
Inspired by Bulbs grant recipients, Myers Elementary School Junior Master Gardeners, Gainesville, Ga., planted their ‘Learning Quilt’ in a bed frame constructed by the high school shop class.
“The shop class originally made a foot board, but we removed the slats of that piece so the quilt can be seen better,” says Robbie McCormac, who is coordinating the project. “The Myers mascot is a blue dragon, which you can see painted on the headboard.”
Robbie continues: “We made a white grid from screen molding, so that it would resemble white cloth between the colors. Then we had 35 students take turns planting the bulbs within each white square. We planted all hyacinths (so they’ll bloom at the same time) in colors of purple, pink and yellow. We planted about 240 bulbs in the quilt.”
“You can see that the vertical slats that were originally in the footboard have been removed, leaving just blue bedposts and one white cross bar. We’ll be able to see the flowers through the posts when they bloom. Each of the students signed their name on the back of the headboard, which faces a wall and can’t be seen.”
“The bulbs should bloom around April 2010, so keep your fingers crossed! I’ll send you pictures when we see blooms!”
Submitted on: December 6, 2009
By: Craig Cramer
Topic: General | Add Comment (0) »
Colchicums: In person and in scans
Colchicums are fast becoming one of my favorite flower bulbs. Like most bulbs, they push up their foliage in spring and then die back. But they hold off on flowering until fall — just when the garden could use a little jolt of color.
The variety below, ‘Waterlily’ isn’t typical featuring extra petals.
Here’s a scan I did of several different colchicums growing in my garden. The white one is ‘Alboplenum’, which also features the extra petals like ‘Waterlily’. The other three are from a ‘pass-along plant’ that a gardening friend gave me, and resemble large crocuses.
Here’s what ‘Alboplenum’ looks like in the garden, providing some fall foraging for a hungry honeybee:
Here’s another at a friend’s garden that has a checkerboard pattern on it’s petals:
Colchicums are as easy to grow as other bulbs, and spread if they’re happy where you plant them. You only need to be careful not to weed them out by accident in spring.
As a plus, deer and other critters won’t eat them because they contain toxic colchicine, sometimes used as an anti-gout drug. But for that reason, you need to be careful not to plant them where there’s a risk that small children might ingest them.
Submitted on: October 25, 2009
By: Craig Cramer
Topic: Activities, How to grow | 1 Comment »
Web roundup - St. Basil’s bulb mosaic
St. Basil’s in bulbs - His Excellency Mr K.G. Gevorgian, Russian ambassador to the Netherlands, joined forces with staff at Keukenhof, the historic Dutch flower bulb park, to add the final touches to a flower bulb mosaic. The mosaic (21 by 12 m, 65,000 flower bulbs) presents an impression of the towers of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow’s Red Square. You can do simpler projects with children, youth and community groups, such as labyrinths and secret messages in the lawn. See Build a bulb labyrinth activity for more information.
In sync: ‘New Wave’ designs naturally pair bulbs, perennials - Another article about the collaboration of naturalistic designer Piet Oudolf and Jacqueline Van der Kloet, known for incorporating an assortment of major and minor bulbs in her naturalistic designs on the Seasonal Walk at the New York Botanical Garden.
Submitted on: October 25, 2009
By: Craig Cramer
Topic: General, Links, News | Add Comment (0) »
Bulb ‘naturalizing’ tips (videos and articles)
Sally Ferguson provides tips for choosing and planting ‘naturalizing bulbs’ — “… those that accommodate themselves fully to their new sites, feeling so at home that they multiply naturally, on their own, increasing in numbers year after year.” Read the article: Say “Hello Old Friend” to Naturalized
Spring Bloomers, Year after Year.
On The Bulb Project website, see also:
Here, Sally explains how to plant bulbs right into the lawn:
And here she is with more design and planting tips to help you get the most out of your bulbs:
You can see more spring-flowering bulb videos at bulbvideo.com or the bulbvideo YouTube channel.
Submitted on: October 4, 2009
By: Craig Cramer
Topic: How to grow, Links | Add Comment (0) »
Art connections: Monet’s Agapanthus, Les Fleurs Animées
Bulbs have long been the subject of art. Here are two examples, from the sublime to the somewhat ridiculous.
Claude Monet is probably most famous for his mural-sized paintings of water lilies, now on display at the Museum of Modern Art. But those paintings are sharing the stage this time with a less-famous but still inspired and inspiring painting of an Agapanthus, according to a review in the New York Times
“Agapanthus,” 1914-26, meanwhile, moves to dry land and a grassy green Art Nouveau swirl of the leaves and tiny, clustered mauve blooms of this plant, also known as the Lily of the Nile.
“Agapanthus,” which entered the museum’s collection in 1992, measures around 6 ½ by 6 feet. It is nonetheless a study, probably painted from life and then taken back to the studio to help in the execution of larger works that were in many ways less finished and descriptive.
According to a post one of my favorite visual blogs, BibliOdyssey (books, illustrations, science, history, visual materia obscura, and eclectic bookart) JJ Grandville’s Les Fleurs Animées (1847) is filled with “anthropomorphic figures of apparent whimsical innocence [that] are in fact serving as the visual arm of a satirical work that mocks the sentimentality and effusiveness with which flowers had been portrayed during the romantic era.”
I think they’re just plain fun. Can your students make their own ‘flower people’?
You can view more at BibliOdyssey or view the whole book at the Missouri Botanical Garden website.
Submitted on: September 27, 2009
By: Craig Cramer
Topic: General | Add Comment (0) »
History connection: Henry Hudson
At a ceremony in New York’s Battery Park September 9, Princess Maxima of the Netherlands (right) baptized a new ‘Henry Hudson’ tulip to honor the 400th Anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage. Battery Park was once the site of the fort that guarded the young colony of New Amsterdam.
The ceremony was part of NY400, a joint Dutch-American celebration of the shared history of New York City and the City of Amsterdam. The Maxima and her husband, Willem-Alexander, Crown Prince of Orange, also presented the City of New York with a gift of 120,000 flower bulbs to be planted this fall for flowers next spring. [Press release | More images]
Henry Hudson was the English captain hired to helm the Dutch East India Company ship Halve Maen (Half Moon) on an expedition to search out a new passage to the Orient. In the fall of 1609 he sailed into New York harbor where he landed on Manhattan Island, and then traveled up the Hudson as far as present-day Albany.
His explorations established a Dutch claim to the area and paved the way for their colonization of southern New York as the colony of New Amsterdam. On a subsequent voyage in 1610 in the ship Discovery, Hudson explored the coast of Greenland and discovered the Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada, the second largest bay in the world after the Bay of Bengal.
For more information, see 1609: The forgotten history of Hudson, Amsterdam and New York at the Henry Hudson 400 website.
Bonus resource: Into maps? The Henry Hudson 400 homepage has a map overlay feature that allows you to explore historical maps along with Google maps. For example, you can trace Henry Hudson’s voyages on google maps or maps of that day. Worth exploring.
Submitted on: September 27, 2009
By: Craig Cramer
Topic: Activities, General, News | Add Comment (0) »
On a roll: Inspired by Bulbs project at Grove Patterson Academy
The Inspired by Bulbs project at Grove Patterson Academy in Toledo, Ohio, is off to a running start, according to an article in The Toledo Blade.
The idea for a flower bulb labyrinth got started with a $250 Inspired by Bulbs grant teacher Kara Houser obtained, but “has turned into a huge, major undertaking,” she says.
Kara is appealing to the community for contributions so that students can build a 13,000-bulb labyrinth. While donations roll in, “Eighth graders have been enlisted to generate geometric proposals as a mathematics lesson, … broadening the educational element beyond plant life and related biology.”
“A graph for each classroom went up in the hallways to graph the bulbs coming in,” says Kara. In addition to bulb donations, a local organization has pledged $1,000 to purchase additional bulbs,” she adds.
The Grove Patterson Academy is one of 11 Inspired by Bulbs projects funded across the country by U.S. Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center.
Submitted on: September 14, 2009
By: Craig Cramer
Topic: General | Add Comment (0) »
Bulbs deer (and other wildlife) don’t like
Flower bulbs are “The perfect lunch box,” according to Leonard Perry, an extension professor with the University of Vermont, quoted in an AP article by Dean Fosdick. “Put them in the ground this fall, and I guarantee you the plant pests will come.”
There are ways to minimize animal damage, and it begins by not underestimating squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, deer, mice, voles, moles and the many other critters that feast on flower bulbs.
The article outlines several strategies, including:
- Pest-resistant bulbs
- Barriers
- Unpleasant smells and flavors
- Lights, sprinklers and barking dogs
In my own garden — home range for deer, chipmunks, voles and other rodents — I rely mostly on the pest-resistant bulbs strategy. I do plant some tulips where it’s hard for the deer to find them, or close enough to the house that they are wary. But I inevitably lose some of those to the chipmunks.
There’s no shortage of choices. Here’s a list from the Chicago Botanical Garden that will provide plenty of options for the critter-plagued garden.
- Allium
- Anemone
- Arum italicum
- Bulbocodium vernum
- Chionodoxa
- Colchicum
- Dichelostemma
- Fritillaria
- Galanthus
- Geranium tuberosum
- Hyacinthoides
- Ipheion
- Leucojum
- Muscari
- Nectaroscordum siculum (pictured)
- Narcissus
- Ornithogalum
- Scilla
Submitted on: September 6, 2009
By: Craig Cramer
Topic: How to grow | Add Comment (0) »
Web roundup
A Tapestry of Color, Unfolding All Year - In her New York Times column, Anne Raver raves about the new four-season border at the New York Botanical Garden designed by two international garden superstars, Piet Oudolf and Jacqueline van der Kloet: “”Observing this latest collaboration unfold from week to week is a revelation for any gardener.”
The circles, which were ablaze with daffodils this spring, are now afloat with airy geum, cosmos, acidanthera and dahlias. The batwings, full of tulips in May, are now abloom with cosmos, angelonia and lantana.
You can follow the border’s progress and learn about it’s design and plant combinations at the Seasonal Walk Chronicles website.
Anna Pavord’s top 10 bulbs - The gardening correspondent for the UK Independent and the author of eight previous books, including the bestselling The Tulip lists her favorites. She gardens in Dorset, England. So your mileage may vary when growing these bulbs in your garden. But if Anna thinks them worthy, you should check them out and see if they match your growing conditions.
Everything Old is New Again - In his weekly podcast, garden writer Ken Druse interviews Scott Kunst, the owner of Old House Gardens, which specializes in heirloom bulbs, antique peonies and other old-timey plants. Why grow peonies? “They offer a living connection with gardeners of the past: the pioneers, Thomas Jefferson, medieval monks, Chinese emperors, or maybe your own grandmother,” says Kunst, who lists more reasons here. Listen to or download the podcast [mp3].
Submitted on: August 30, 2009
By: Craig Cramer
Topic: General, Links, News | Add Comment (0) »