It's time to put down some bulbs and then forget about them until spring
If you can do only one thing in the garden between now and November, plant bulbs. Plant lots of bulbs. Get a bulb planter to make the task easier. The hand-tool is a nifty thing: plunge it into the ground, lift it out and it removes a cylinder of soil. Drop a bulb into the hole you've just made, squeeze the handle of the planter, and the soil plops back in. Simple. Then, forget about the bulbs until next spring, when all your efforts will be only dimly remembered, yet brilliantly rewarded.
While you're forgetting about your bulbs, they are enacting one of the great underground miracles of gardening. As soon as you put it into the ground, a bulb starts to energise, its dormant tissues expanding in the moist darkness, and sending out questing, hairy, white roots that fasten it into the soil and pull in water and nutrients. Then, a tiny embryonic nub deep within its heart elongates into a shoot, and drives up through the middle, a rocket in slow motion. The shoot tip is a purpose-built nose cone of leaf or bud, able to thrust through the heaviest clay and to nudge aside obstructions. It pushes up to the surface, turns green as soon as it glimpses the light - and you know the rest.
Snowdrops, crocuses, early daffodils and early irises such as the delicate I. reticulata, and the watery looking I. unguicularis are the first bulbs to become active underground, so these should be the first that you plant. Get them into the soil now. Be careful about the quality of snowdrops though, and buy only from specialist bulb-sellers. The bulbs can dry out and never recover. Traditionally snowdrops are planted "in the green" in spring: whole plants are dug up after they have flowered (but are still full of life), and are immediately replanted. Autumn planted bulbs will establish only if they have been stored properly by grower and supplier, and should be planted the minute you receive them. Middleton and Heritage Wild About Bulbs both stock plump and fresh snowdrop bulbs. The latter company has several varieties.
Along with snowdrops, daffodils are the essence of spring (which is why some gardeners hate to see them in florists' shops at Christmas - except for fragrant paper whites, of course). In recent years, pink-cupped daffs have become all the rage. Well, they're labelled as pink, but they're more a pastel-orange, artificial limb colour, which is interesting, but it looks a bit washed out next to classic yellow daffs. With anything new like this, a good tactic is to grow it in a pot for the first year, so you can move it around the garden until it finds a congenial companion.
Split corona daffodils are another new development, where the central cup looks as if it has been sliced in several places, and peeled back to lie against the outer part of the flower (the perianth). If you don't think of them as daffodils, they are actually tremendously alluring, and often have coronas in gloriously artificial ice-pop orange. Lovers of conventionally shaped daffs who hanker after something new or special might try the large-cupped 'Raspberry Ring' which has a white perianth, and a yellow corona dipped in a red berry-ish colour; or 'Goose Green', a small-cupped, fragrant variety, all white with a green eye (both from Mr Middleton).
If you're planting tall daffodils, put them at the back of the border (or in pots), so that the foliage doesn't take centre stage after the flowers have faded. And (I say this most years, but I'm on a mission here) please don't plait or tie up the leaves in tidy bundles. Not only does this practice look like the work of a deranged, overly compulsive person, but it is also prevents the bulbs from properly regenerating. The sun must reach all the surfaces of the leaves in order for the foliage to efficiently feed the bulbs. Miniature daffodils, such as 'Tête-à-tête', 'February Gold', 'February Silver', 'Hawera' (and a rake of other pint-sized kinds) have less obvious foliage, and may be more suitable for smaller plots, for containers and for balcony gardens.
When naturalising daffodils (that is, planting them in grass), or indeed any bulbs, remember that you won't be able to mow for about six weeks after flowering. So, grow early varieties, or plant the bulbs in elegant shoals and mow paths around them. Some other bulbs that are suitable for this treatment are Anemone blanda and A. nemorosa, Camassia, glory of the snow (Chionodoxa luciliae), Crocus tommasinianus and other small wild-looking crocus, Cyclamen hederifolium (late summer and autumn) and C. coum, winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis), Erythronium, snake's head fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris), snowdrop (Galanthus), English bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta), snowflake (Leucojum), grape hyacinth (Muscari armeniacum), star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum nutans and O. umbellatum), small species kinds of tulips.
I just mentioned tulips, but that's the last you'll hear about them here today, because we'll talk about them a lot more next week. I also mentioned fritillaries, which are among the prettiest of spring bulbs, from the delicate, chequered snake's head, to the stately crown imperial (Fritillaria imperialis). I don't have much luck with frits (as we gardeners call them), because my slugs make mincemeat of them. But let me commend them to country gardeners who have much larger pests. Deer, I'm told, won't touch them with a bargepole. Nor, apparently, do they like the taste of ornamental onions (Allium). The latter are still tremendously fashionable, and rightly so, as they happily bounce above the late-May and June border. They're not spring bulbs, but you can still plant them now.
Finally, there is just time to muse upon the rise of the bearded iris. For a few years running it has been hailed as Chelsea Flower Show's most fashionable bloom. Breeders have been at work producing repeat flowering kinds that give a second, smaller flush later in the season. Among the rebloomers are 'Best Bet', 'Mother Earth', 'Autumn Circus', 'Champagne Elegance', 'Immortality' and 'Painted Clouds' (from Mr Middleton). Remember that bearded irises are a bit prima donna-ish: they need a light soil and a baking position in summer, and they don't like to be crowded by other plants.
GETTING THE BEST FROM BULBS
•Choose plump and unwrinkled bulbs, with no blemishes, mould or new roots. Larger bulbs give better results.
•Plant bulbs pointy side up, at a depth of about three times their height (or slightly less in very heavy soil). Add grit to the planting hole in clay soil to aid drainage. A sprinkle of blood-fish-and-bone or seaweed meal helps spur the roots into activity. Plant in clouds, broad rivers or other natural-looking shapes, not in straight lines. But rectangular blocks look good in geometric, contemporary gardens.
•Put a label in the ground after you've planted them.
Mr Middleton Garden Shop, 58 Mary Street, Dublin 1. Telephone: 01-8603674; www.mrmiddleton.com.
Heritage Bulbs, Tullynally Castle, Castlepollard, Co Westmeath. Telephone: 044-9662744; www.wildaboutbulbs.comand www.heritagebulbs.com.