Colorful Spring Flower Enjoy Fall Starts

By Thomas Fryd

In most sections of the country fall is garden building time, and in all parts of the country it is spring bulb planting time too. Here are some ideas adapted from gardens seen at several of the large spring flower shows. They will help you crystallize your own ideas on garden improvement and stimulate you to action.

It is not mere chance that many of the ideas shown include spring-flowering bulbs. Flowering bulbs usher in the garden year, and no planting, regardless of its size, can really afford to be without them. Tulips, daffodils and hyacinths are the colorful big three. Use them lavishly for a gay and joyful send-off in your own garden next spring.

Here is a point you should not overlook - From the simple nook-and-corners on up to more ambitious schemes all relate in some way to a house, terrace or other architectural feature. The plants, whether trees, shrubs or spring flowers, are not dropped aimlessly in beds about a yard. They serve to enhance some worthwhile feature and are in turn enhanced by it.

Gardens and the landscape is a continuing process. Plantings started this season may not, in the scheme of things, be completed for several years. The goal is to help you make a start or continue to improve the garden you have.

Large glassed areas of modern homes create a problem for gardeners, but a low raised bed filled with bright bulbs solves it and makes a stunning picture. Through the summer low-growing annuals and ivy edging take over the job.

A tiny front-door terrace is made unusually "happy" by massing yellow trumpet narcissi around porch post. Later, Heavenly blue morning-glories and pots of annuals keep it colorful.

Small properties gain in interest by change of level, variety of texture. An idea from the Washington Show presents a wall of brick, fence-topped, and a plant box with azaleas set out under a flowering tree. Lower level alternates herbs or vegetables with flowers - bulbs, followed by annuals or perennials.

A tiny patio with a picture window overlooking it. Clipped box, santolina, and lavender give it year-round form and interest, with massed hyacinths and tulips providing " spring color. Summer finds rich-colored pansies lending contrast to the silvery foliage tones.

Blossoming shrubs and trees against gray weathered fences are always effective . Use dogwood or a flowering crab, under-planted with a medley of harmonizing spring bulbs, candytuft, aubrieta, stromanthe triostar and alyssum.

Simple color schemes are always in the best of good taste. Those featuring silver with white and green was most effective. White lilies are dramatically silhouetted against deep green shrubs and evergreens. Beds of all-white begonias, impatiens, caladiums and astilbe are outlined with silvery artemisia and Cineraria maritinta. - 29857

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