Tiny bulbs offer colorful impact at end of winter

This is the time to plant bulbs. If you are sifting through the catalogs, don't overlook the little guys. Crocuses, snowdrops, dwarf irises and others are only a few inches tall, but arriving at the end of winter, they can make a big impact. Many of these appear before the tulips and daffodils think about showing their colors, and they are all the more treasured for it.

Nature has packed everything it needs to make for a colorful spring inside these little bulbs. You just need to find the right spot and to keep the squirrels from digging them up.

Here are a half-dozen of my top little bulbs, but don't limit yourself. Half the fun is seeing what will pop up as the season progresses.

Few flowers compare with snowdrops. They are among the most beautiful and graceful of flowers and bloom in mid-February, or sometimes even earlier. They are a welcome sight. The little, milk-white flowers, often tipped in green, dangle like tiny lanterns on the end of thread-thin stems.

Snowdrops are usually the first flower. It can take some hunting to find these little harbingers whose flowers sometimes wear a cap of snow. Snowdrops seem to do best when a generous neighbor passes them on to you. They like to be dug "in the green," that is with the foliage still intact, unlike most bulbs, which are sold dormant. Simply divide an established clump after flowering, and set them in their new position.

Crocuses come a little later, but they also can be caught in a late snowstorm that they will shrug off. With their grasslike leaves and oversized flowers, crocuses brighten winter days and then disappear until next spring. A patch of crocuses will gradually expand and become naturalized, even popping up through the grass.

When we think of tulips, what comes to mind are big, brash flowers in every imaginable color. But the wild counterparts are comely denizens of high-mountain steppes and plains. You can picture them carpeting meadows and the edges of woodlands, dainty against a backdrop of snowmelt.

Look for the Lady Jane tulip, a variety of Tulipa clusiana. A row of red outer petals surrounds a row of white inner ones. When they open, they give the impression of flowering peppermint sticks. They are only a foot high. The more of them you have, the happier you will be.

I have a serious weakness for all things iris. If your picture of an iris involves 2-foot-tall fans of leaves and gargantuan tissue-paper flowers, then your iris world is due for an expansion.

There are Siberian irises, Japanese irises, Juno irises, Dutch irises and on and on. But the little-bulb grower will love the reticulated iris, an early-flowering beauty. These flowers are highly sculptural and come in colors of sapphire blue, indigo and sky blue, often with flares of white and orange. A carpet of them is gorgeous in March. They flower just a few inches off the ground, but the grasslike leaves continue upward after the flowers have passed.

Alliums, or flowering onions, are generally thought of as large flowers, too. Typically, the allium is represented by giant balls of flowers on a stick. The globelike flowers are held on naked stems that can reach up to 4 feet tall. But there are smaller ones that fit nicely in a rock garden or border front. Allium karataviense has pleated flat leaves that lay against the ground, and flesh-pink to white flowers form spheres 5 inches across.

Finally, consider grape hyacinths as a low-flowering complement to all those irresistible daffodils, narcissus and tulips. They come in sky blue, azure, deep cobalt and rose pink and white. Blooming at 4 to 10 inches, they are an excellent fringe for the sunny yellows and egg-yolk oranges that daffodils bring.

Planting bulbs is simple. Dig a deep enough bed and tuck the bulb in at the proper depth for the variety. Adding organic matter, slow-release fertilizer and gravel to a clay bed will help with drainage and ensure that your bulbs return year after year.

Too much summer moisture makes for unhappy bulbs. Generally, they are easy and forgiving and return for years just in time to remind you another spring is around the corner.