Growing Bulbs in
Home Gardens and Indoors
Find inspiration and ideas, learn bulb basics, and plan your plantings to beautify your yard while making their care quick and easy.
We’ll show some examples of using bulbs indoors and in the landscape. You’ll find other examples of bulbs in gardens by looking online, in periodicals, and in books.
Various species of bulbs bloom in most of the seasons of the year. In all, for most gardeners, there are 6–8 blooming periods, beginning in late winter, spanning spring, summer, and autumn, and finishing in early winter.
Depending on where you garden, there are bulbs that fit your needs for blooming flowers throughout the garden season. Let’s examine these bulbs more closely.
But first, let’s start with the basics: What, exactly, are these special flowering plants we call bulbs?
Getting Started with Bulbs
Most plants called bulbs are one of five major categories of bulbous plants: true bulbs, corms, rhizomes, tubers, or tuberous roots.
A few “bulbs” are actually pseudobulbs—rooted plants that mimic true bulbs or tubers—by producing foliage and flowers, then going dormant to survive long dry spells, and reviving when rains renew their growth.
Learn more about these differences so you can recognize each type of bulb and plant them to your advantage [see: Bulb Basics].
Another way of looking at bulbs is to separate them by their season of bloom. Many prefer to refer to “spring bulbs,” “summer bulbs,” and “autumn” or “winter” bulbs. It’s a good way to help choose bulbs and plan for seasonal color in your yard [see: Bulbs and Seasons of Bloom].
Home gardeners plant bulbs outdoors, of course [see: Bulbs in Home Landscapes]. It’s not, however, their only use.
These wonderful plants also make great houseplants and you’ll find many ways to trick them into producing showy blooms at any time of the year to beautify your home [see: Bulbs Indoors and Forcing Bulbs].
To help you in your plans, we’ll also provide some useful tips about various regions of the United States and when you should plant your bulbs [see: Regional Tips for Bulbs].
Inspired by Bulbs
Outdoors in the landscape, bulbs typically provide five major design options for home gardens:
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- Formal Plantings
- Informal Plantings
- Natural and “Naturalized” Plantings
- Bed and Border Plantings
- Mixed Plantings
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Indoors, there are three ways to use bulbs to brighten your home:
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- Bulbs in Containers
- Forced Bulb Blooms
- Bulbs as Foliage Houseplants
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Whether to choose a formal or informal planting style is a matter of choice for each individual. The decision involves matching bulb plantings to overall design and decor choices used throughout the yard and home.
At the opposite end of the scale are naturalized bulb plantings that mimic in our mind’s eye how a natural setting might appear: a clump of flowers here, a solo plant there, turf with bulbs flowering through the green grass, or a field of spring bulbs blooming beneath trees just coming into leaf.
Some gardeners prefer to mass their bulbs in beds or borders, while others like to mix bulbs, annual and perennial flowers, shrubs, and trees.
Gain inspiration and learn more about all your bulb-planting options by exploring these links:
Step-By-Step Instruction
Forcing Bulbs for Year-Round Color
Forcing bulbs is a process used to have blooming fresh flowers growing in containers throughout every season.
Forcing “tricks” bulbs into starting their bloom cycles, even in winter.
Nearly all bulbs have periods of dormancy followed by new growth and flowers. Keep your spring bulbs dormant until you want them to grow by refrigerating them at 40°–45°F (4°–7°C)—about the temperature in the vegetable keeper of a household refrigerator.
Interested? Learn complete details on the process used to force bulbs of various types, along with additional hands-on demonstrations [See: Forcing Bulbs, Planting Forced Bulbs, and Caring for Forced Bulbs].
How to Plant Bulbs Forced in Soil
Chill tulip, narcissus, paper whites or daffodil bulbs for 6–8 weeks, stored inside a breathable paper bag in a home refrigerator’s vegetable keeper. When chilling is complete, remove them for planting.
Prepare the pot for planting by layering the drain hole with porous landscape fabric, stones, or shards of broken crockery.
Fill the container with 3–4 in. (75–100 mm) of loose potting soil.
Crowd the bulbs into the container, keeping their pointed ends upright. Pack them tightly against one another.
Press the bulbs gently down to set them into the potting soil medium.
Fill the space between bulbs with additional soil medium.
Place the container on pot feet so that it drains well when watered.
Water thoroughly, adding more soil if areas settle.
Install decorative elements or accents as desired.
Place the pot in a dark, cool spot and keep it moist until sprouts emerge, then bring it into a warm, full sun location for display.
The bulbs will bloom in 7–14 days.