Think Spring and Summer…Think Color and Variety!!! Mixing Bulbs in your garden beds

by Jan Boone While we have watched our summer gardens produce their final fruits, and as flowers fade from this growing season, many of us procrastinate a bit longer regarding the chores of putting our gardens to bed before the coming cooler weather.   We’d prefer to enjoy watching the yellow leaves fall, or listen with awe to bull elk bugle as they pass through the neighborhood or across a nearby meadow. Relish the changing of the seasons but consider challenging yourself to recognize the potential of creating new focal point beds and new directions in your garden for next Spring and Summer.    Take a good look at new garden catalogs now arriving in the mail and think through the different looks you can test by combining bulbs, or rhizomes with ground covers, natives, early blooming annuals or established later season perennials.   It’s easy to accommodate new looks with variety in heights, shapes, bloom textures, leaf variations and color.    Whether in containers or beds, we all kno