Naturalizing bulbs in your garden is one of the easiest, most care-free ways to grow flowers year after year. "Naturalizing" means planting bulbs in random, natural-looking drifts in grassy areas, under trees, or at the edges of shrub borders. It is really easy to do, and bulbs planted this way tend to just look better year after year as they multiply naturally, giving  you more flowers as time goes on.

 

Where to Plant

The best places to naturalize bulbs are those areas of your garden that tend to be low-maintenance already, places where you can see and enjoy the flowers, but not be bothered by the sight of the foliage as it dies back. Early bulbs, such as spring crocus, are often naturalized in lawns, where they have time to bloom and for the foliage to ripen before you even have to mow. Thick grass might be too competitive to grow bulbs this way, but if you have a sparse area of lawn (as we often find under trees, where the leaves shade the grass and roots compete for space and water) that would likely be the perfect place to naturalize some hardy bulbs. They'll get plenty of sun before blooming (since the trees won't have leafed out yet) and you'll get a nice pop of color in what could be an otherwise drab area of your yard. An area like this would also be really pretty planted with some shade-tolerant annuals or groundcovers, and you'll have a pretty woodland-style garden instead of struggling lawn.

 

Planting Naturalized Bulbs

The key to successfully naturalizing bulbs is to plant them in a random-looking arrangement, never in lines or blocks. Spend a little bit of time placing the bulbs in the area before you plant holes. They should just kind of look scattered around; a clump of three or five here, maybe a stray one off to the side. Very natural and random looking. Some articles suggest just tossing the bulbs and planting them where they land, but this isn't always a great idea. Tossing them can bruise the bulbs, and that can cause rot once the bulbs are planted.

A narrow trowel or bulb planter is great for planting individual bulbs. However, if you're going to plant a group of bulbs, you can dig a shallow hole for them. In either case, if you're naturalizing in a lawn, it's best to remove the sod from the hole first, dig the hole, plant the bulbs at the proper depth, then replace the sod. In the spring, the foliage will pop up through the grass. For planting single, small bulbs, you can usually even forego the hole; just place your trowel into the sod/soil, pull back, creating a gap in the soil, drop your bulb in, and pull the trowel out. It takes seconds to plant bulbs this way, and you can cover a large area in very little time.

 

The Best Bulbs for Naturalizing

Some bulbs work better for naturalizing than others. Generally, think "small." Small bulbs tend to bloom more reliably, and they're easy to plant. As an added bonus, they're usually pretty inexpensive as well; important if you plan on naturalizing them in large drifts. Some of the bulbs that work best for naturalizing include:

• Daffodils
• Siberian squill
• Summer snowflake
• Spanish bluebells
• Crocus
• Snowdrops
• Lily leek
• Grecian windflower
• Autumn crocus
• Grape hyacinth

 

So if you're looking to add more blooms to your garden, consider naturalizing in a lawn or other lower-maintenance area of your garden. You'll be rewarded year after year with drifts of flowers, with no work at all on your part.