Spring Bulbs at Glendoick

It’s a crisp and frosty morning in January here at Glendoick. It may be that your containers, window boxes and your borders are looking a bit tired at this time of year, but there are lots of opportunities for colour.

The first lot of primroses are coming in.  We’ve got two here; the short stemmed ones traditionally called primroses and the long stem ones called polyanthus.  The growers tend to get these a bit mixed up now so you often get Primroses on both of them but that's the difference between them.  They're coming into flower now and you should get them on and off all the way through to March.  They come in as you can see here almost any colour in the rainbow and there will be duller ones coming in over the next couple of weeks.

The other thing that we've got a lot of at this time of the year is potted bulbs. Most of them are not doing a great deal yet, but this is absolutely the perfect time to put them in, don't wait until they come into flower and put them in. You can see the little bulbs are coming up with these snowdrops and the very first one is about ready to open.  You can just plant these straight into the garden or in a window box or container for now and then once they have flowered and died down and you can plant it in your garden for next year and they’ll come up every year so that's snow drops, that’ll be one of the first things that comes out.

This is a hyacinth here, scented, this one here was forced into flower they don’t normally come out this early, better to buy them this stage when the little buds are just emerging and this will come into flower in the next few weeks with a lovely scent. Then we've got the Tête-à-Têtes, this one here is one that we had in a in a container and it's been forced out, it’s a lovely spring colour and again these will come up every year and this is the stage to get them at. These are on special offer* you can buy six of these for £10* and it’s a great way to get lots of wonderful yellow early in the season.

KEN COX ON SPRING BULBS AT GLENDOICK

So what kind of bulbs have we got? These are bluebells just emerging from the soil now; you get a good thicket of blue in a few months with them. We've got crocus that'd be one of the first, all different colours of purple and white. Grape hyacinths, white ones blue ones, all sorts of different bulbs. We also have daffodils and a whole range of tulips-dwarf and bigger ones. So, this one here is a dwarf Iris with a fantastic colour of purples and blues and the great thing about these are that they are completely frost hardy and snow hardy, I've seen these flowering covered in snow where you almost have to blow the snow off!  

That’s a great contrast of colour for spring and again, it doesn't matter how cold it is you can still have some beautiful colour in your garden.

*This offer was available at time of filming this video and might not still be running, please check in-store for the most up to date offers.

If you need any other information about spring bulbs or any of the other things that we have been discussing on these videos, any aspect of gardening pop into Glendoick Garden Centre on the Perth, Dundee Road, visit our website www.glendoick.com and like us on Facebook where you'll get these videos every week when they come out."

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Ken Cox is the resident Small City, Big Personality Garden columnist and expert. Born in 1964 into a family of renowned plantsmen, Kenneth Cox is grandson of planthunter, writer and nurseryman Euan Cox and son of Peter Cox VMH. The three generations were and are considered  the world's leading experts on rhododendrons.