Longfield Gardens Blog

It’s always such a long wait for spring’s first flowers. When they finally burst on the scene, the bounty of blooms combined with months of pent up flower energy is almost too much to handle! My favorite way to cope with this delightful moment of excess is to cut lots of stems and make lots of bouquets. Week after week, every room in my

Topics: Cut Flowers , Daffodils , Fall Planted Bulbs , How-To , Spring Blooming Bulbs , Tulips

  The National Garden Bureau has put tulips in the spotlight this year, by declaring 2018 the Year of the Tulip. These cheery, easy-to-grow bulbs are already the world’s favorite spring flowers. Yet demand is still growing! According to Statistics Netherlands, commercial tulip bulb production reached an all-time high in 2017, with the number of tulips grown by Dutch farmers increasing by

Topics: Cut Flowers , Fall Planted Bulbs , Inspiration , Spring Blooming Bulbs , Tulips

Gardeners often have a strong opinion about the color pink. In truth, it can be challenging to work with. Read on to learn why that’s true, and get some tips and techniques for using pink in your flower garden. Cultural biases are the first challenge to overcome. Pink is a color that’s often associated with sweets, babies, girls, cuteness, cotton candy and

Topics: Fall Planted Bulbs , How-To , Inspiration , Perennials , Spring Blooming Bulbs , Spring Planted Bulbs

Flower bulbs are incredibly forgiving. This fact is driven home to us every year when we start planting fall bulbs in our New Jersey trial garden. We always intend to get this project underway sooner, but have accepted the fact that for us, planting rarely happens before Thanksgiving.

Topics: Fall Planted Bulbs , How-To , Spring Blooming Bulbs

Voles are cute little mouse-like rodents with long tails and big appetites. Unlike moles, which are carnivores, voles are strictly herbivores. They eat plant roots and tubers, mushrooms, berries, seeds and nuts, and the bark of shrubs and small trees. And, unfortunately, they have a special fondness for flower bulbs.

Topics: Fall Planted Bulbs , How-To , Spring Blooming Bulbs , Tulips

Every garden looks better with alliums. Their globe-like flowers are big attention-getters that add structure, motion and personality wherever they are planted. These fall-planted bulbs will grow almost anywhere. They’re not bothered by deer, rabbits and other garden pests, yet they are magnets for bees and butterflies!

Topics: Alliums , Fall Planted Bulbs , Inspiration , Spring Blooming Bulbs

Wouldn’t it be fun to plant a LOT of tulips this fall? Maybe 200. Or why not 500? Enough to have your own spring cutting garden with a full range of flower styles and bloom times. To finally experience some of the varieties you have only seen in photographs. To inject a big shot of color

Topics: Cut Flowers , Fall Planted Bulbs , How-To , Spring Blooming Bulbs , Tulips

This guest post about daffodils was written by Melinda Myers, nationally-known gardening expert, TV/radio host, author & columnist . Daffodils are probably my favorite spring flowering bulbs. Their cheery color, animal resistance and versatility makes it easy to incorporate them into any size landscape. Plus, the variety of bloom times gives you flowers for the entire spring season.

Topics: Daffodils , Fall Planted Bulbs , Inspiration , Spring Blooming Bulbs

Classic daffodils are easy to recognize. They have a prominent trumpet surrounded by six petals. Double daffodils look completely different. They have at least one extra layer of petals and no sign of a trumpet! With double daffodils, there is little difference between the perianth (petals) and the corona (trumpet). Both of these flower parts look like petals,

Topics: Daffodils , Fall Planted Bulbs , Spring Blooming Bulbs

Want to stand out in a crowd? Try wearing stripes. It works for tulips! When our spring trial garden is in bloom, it’s a kaleidoscope of color. We plant 25,000 flower bulbs each fall, including more than a hundred varieties of tulips. During April and May, there’s so much color going on, that it’s hard

Topics: Fall Planted Bulbs , Spring Blooming Bulbs , Tulips