Bulbs in place of annuals

I recently designed/planted a couple of perennial borders and the front edge of most true perennial borders tend to be a little boring. Of course one can always plant annuals but I have always thought that bulbs are far more impressive even if they don't last as long. I'm not even assuming that the bulbs will perennialize - where I live precious few will.

To keep things going through summer and fall I have planted or plan to plant flowering perennials which will start showing there stuff when the bulbs quit, and possibly even hide yellowing bulb foilage if I was to keep any in the ground. Mostly I selected perennial dianthus and there are some new shorter asters which may work well although I think the asters will need yearly dividing to keep them under control.

In my own border, which has about 30'x2' of what I considered "front border", I planted the following bulbs -

Darwin Tulips underplanted with anemone blanda
Daffodils planted with anemone coronaria
and Ranunculus.

Anyone else have a similar strategy for the border edge?

I have never worked with asters. In zone 9 do they tend to lose most of their foilage in the winter so as not to compete visually with the bulbs in spring? The aster dumosus are fairly low plants but they tend to spread so I imagine I will have to divide frequently as I said.

Hi Alex,

I have a rock wall along the drive way that has about 3' of flat and then its
a steep hillside up. I've been working on taming it for years and finally planted
it out. I put in crocus, anemone blanda, tulips, asiatic lilies, daylilies and a
bunch of misc minor bulbs. I just love bulbs. They bloom earlier than annuals
ever could here in my zone 6.

Tam

I have seen a bulb border that was planted with smaller bulbs, muscari and crocus, and then had hosta (dwarf) for summer. That was in zone 4.

Another plant that you could use instead of aster is chrysanthemum. If you have a hard edge against the bed and lawn, like brick or metal edging, you shouldn't have an 'invasion'. I have seen a garden where they cut back the mums about once a month (until mid Aug), it looked very neat.

Using a different front of border plant, a summer annual, like marigold or low growing zinnia might work too. This is a type of plant that is easy from seed, produces lots of easy to save seed and can be seeded in and around the bulbs in spring. It would overgrow the drying bulb foilage.

Good luck.

Have you thought about some of the smaller Scutellaria's? They blend in easily with the bulbs (in other words stay small enough not to be a problem when the bulbs need to show off) like the following do well here:
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/141372/index.html

http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/51663/index.html

and esp. this one and its real easy to find in the garden centers in the spring:
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/51664/index.html

=) Debbie

Thanks for the recommendations -

I also wanted to ask about anemones, specifically blanda. I planted these at the same time as Darwin tulips hoping to have the classic tulips with a windflower underplanting. The tulips are a few inches tall right now but there is no sign of the anemones yet. Are these usually planted simultaneously for concurrent blooming? I planted a little late - early Dec and bulbs were kept refrigerated up til that time.


On a positive note, the Ranunculus and anemone Monarch de Caen are sprouting.