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. On the contrary it is job that can be done very easily wearing quite inappropriate footwear and clutching a glass of something.Go out and look at your bulbs.Not just in a spirit of admiration but also to note which ones have done well, which have failed and where

mistake.One of the very earliest flowering bulbs in many gardens is Iris reticulata, which is flowering away right now. It has the same shaped flowers as its early summer cousins with hanging falls, but without the distinctive beards (more like Siberian

November is the month to plant tulips. There are few things more wonderful in this world than to cradle a tulip bulb in your hand; the rustling wispy-crispy skin and the smooth, slightly clammy flesh. Supremely organised and efficient gardeners

Looking at the bulb catalogue that is sitting on my desk as I write, I see that there are no fewer than one hundred and sixty one varieties of allium.These vary from the tall to the short, the deep purple to pale pink. Some have heads the size

reading the paper - becomes more important than making decisions about where to plant bulbs. Silly really, but there you go.Fortunately, all is not lost. A good healthy tulip (by which I mean a bulb that is about the size of an egg and is firm of flesh

year’s debris is cleared we can already see the nubs of bulbs and foetal leaves beginning to develop. While we gardeners have been loafing in front of the television and grumbling about the snow, our gardens have been busy.Now all we need is a thaw.

I do love the garden in October - especially in the sunshine. In the early Spring it is all about hope and waiting: all that mulch and neatly tidied brown border. A month or so later and there is green stuff and bulbs all over the place. Then we

.Nectaroscordum grows from a bulb, and is part of the allium (or onion) family. In fact it used to be called Allium bulgaricum until the nomenclaturists stepped in a few years ago. While I'm always smitten by the spherical flowers of most alliums (for example the tennis

, the bulbs haven't started and they had a fabulous morning.All I need to do is fill in the holes, fork over the compacted soil and wait. However, it is probable that there are many better ways of deterring moles rather than allowing two Tibetan terriers to do

candidates - lots of little bulbs cropping up all over the place, like snowdrops, crocus and Iris reticulata - and wonderfully scented Hamamelis mollis, Sarcococca and Daphne bholua.The winter stems were also looking particularly fine - in particular