The sturdiest plants of my childhood grew from bulbs. Those reliable little balls of energy would poke leaves and stems up through the dirt every spring – daffodils, especially, multiplying each year to create enormous sprawls of color. We grew up surrounded by my grandfather’s well-established gardens, making bouquets and taking the splendor for granted. As I got a bit older I loved to dig up the bulbs on a fall afternoon, separate them to encourage growth, and reshape the drifts. I’m partial to single varieties, doubles being a bit too showy for my liking, and my favorite is the delicate Narcissus Actaea, known as the Original Poet’s Daffodil. Each slender stem produces a simple but elegant bloom that is startlingly white with a yellow trumpet edged in red.

This is our second spring in this house, and the landscaping choices of the previous owners relied heavily on expanses of black plastic covered in 2-inch rock. We’re gradually undoing that approach, and a great effort was made last summer to clear the area around a crabapple tree in our front yard and get down to dirt. In the fall, much later in the year than was practical, we ordered some bulbs from Holland (truly – the box was stamped by customs!). We dug three holes near the recently liberated trunk of the crabapple tree and applied a layering approach that I found on the internet. The concept, which would also work in a container, was to build a sort of lasagna of bulbs and soil and compost, allowing for various types of flowers to exist in one little plot. Daffodils went in first, then the soil and compost, the tulips, more soil and compost, and then the crocus bulbs (and more soil). I planted the remaining daffodils and tulips in the backyard, my frozen fingers reminding me that the third week of November was a bit late for such a project. The chill in the air and the soil made me wonder if any spring blooms would even emerge.

The verdict is in: the bulbs from Holland survived their first Minnesota winter! In the front yard, a few crocus leaves and blooms popped up, and the tulips seem to be flourishing. The daffodils in those same spots didn’t make an appearance, so perhaps they were too deep in the layering approach. The tulips in the backyard were chomped off at the base (leaves and stems) before they had a chance to prove themselves, but the daffodils scattered amongst them have bravely soldiered on amidst the destruction. In any case, I’ve deemed the effort a success. We’ll mulch around the plants and seed the nearby lawn later this spring, and in time it will look much less like a barren corner bursting with tulips, and much more like intentional landscaping with a pretty spring flower feature. I’m excited to see how they fill in each year. Now that they are more or less established, I can plant around them and see where it goes. Some Narcissus Actaea might fit in here quite nicely.

A note about resilience: half a dozen scraggly lily leaves were sticking out of a rocky hillside on our property last summer. Since we were replacing the hill with a retaining wall and a shed, we dug up the lilies, pulled the rocks from the bulb clumps (!), and lined up the sad row of yellowing leaves in a makeshift garden spot next to the raised beds. We threw in a bit of compost and hoped they would survive the mid-season move. Survive they did – each clump burst forth this spring with a bold, strong presence. It will be fun to see them bloom and determine how they might brighten up other spots in our yard.

I never knew my grandfather, but he was an artist and a gardener, with a great love for plants of all kinds and a particular appreciation for the amaryllis. He knew to let the bulbs go dormant each summer so that blooms could be forced in the winter, and he passed this knowledge down to his daughter-in-law, my mother. Growing up, we always had amaryllis, and I thought of them as an inheritance of sorts from Grandpa Seaverns. We also had leafy and colorful begonias, cyclamen, geranium, and African violets. Our Christmas cactus lived on a bathroom window sill designed for that very purpose and bloomed almost constantly.

When I lived in a dorm room 15 years ago, my mother mailed me a shoebox of bromeliad wrapped in wet paper towels and a clipping of a philodendron, with a note that they’d both be easy to keep alive. She was right – I provide them with a bit of daylight and I water them when they droop, and both are still in my care, along with their various progeny. The bromeliads can’t be stopped, actually – their rich green leaves grow and curl, while baby bromeliads emerge from the shade below. They’ve never flowered in my care but I learned recently that with a bit of hocus pocus, each of those tiny new plants could be persuaded to bloom – just once. The philodendron is leggy and leafy, which I’ve always liked just fine, but apparently if I clipped those trailing vines once in a while, they would grow into a nice cluster of leaves in the pot. Over the years, additional plants have come into my life, but I’m not terribly attentive, and most of them aren’t very happy.

In October, we visited my aunt in Montreal. Her houseplants are so successful that they compete for space with the furniture. Her flowering azalea is nearly three feet across and was brilliant with blooms on the kitchen table, though it was already snowing outside. Vases and jars of philodendron provide bursts of green in the bathroom and on window sills. I came home determined to assess (and revive) my own houseplant situation.

Most problems can be solved with a spreadsheet, so I started there. I listed all the plants in my care, looked up their preferences, and got everything documented. I didn’t realize that so many houseplants prefer to be root-bound! I flipped through my mother’s houseplant book (which I’ve had on a shelf for years), threw out two of the ugliest spider plants, and put a handful of philodendron clippings into a tall vase full of water. Then I took myself to Gertens and purchased an enormous amaryllis bulb, a Christmas cactus, a few flower pots, and some potting soil. Red and white amaryllis are relatively common, but the apple blossom variety (a favorite in our family) is harder to find, and Gertens had them on hand.

The bulb I pulled out of a barrel in October has burst forth with the most incredible floral display I have ever seen. This amaryllis has twelve blooms at once, with another flower stalk maturing, and I hope to maintain tradition by persuading it into a similar show of color next year. In contrast, all the buds on the Christmas cactus have dried up. I’ve watered it steadily and provided it with sunshine, but I think it lacks humidity. Picturing the Christmas cactus of my childhood, I moved mine into the windowless bathroom this morning while I took a shower, and back into the sunshine this afternoon. Perhaps with some dedicated attention, it can be nursed back to health.

Photo credits, mine.