Every year, I confidently state, “I will not be buying hundreds of bulbs next year! No way! Come mid-September, the boxes (and boxes) are delivered to the door. No, I won’t tell you how many. We are just getting started with fall where I live. And I haven’t been to the garden shops…yet.
Lucy Bellamy’s latest book, A Year in Bloom: Flowering Bulbs for Every Season, hooked me right away. She had me at “pools of color.” “I like them for their optimism, their resilience, and for their transient beauty.” Hear, hear! I kept reading and my list of bulbs to buy yet this year and next year got longer and longer.
Optimism is one of the most essential words in a gardener’s language of love–it’s why we do what we do. It’s why we put seeds and plants and bulbs in the ground and sit back and wait for the magic to happen. And when the magic does happen, we are hooked. You know the feeling, when you are on the ground at the beginning of winter, poking around in the fallen leaves, searching for those dark pink bumps pushing up where the hellebores should be. Before you know it, you start to notice the crocus. Ahhhhhhh, yes, there they are!
To read the rest of the book review, visit Slow Flowers Journal
