Grape Hyacinth

[Drea M]

My husband has been living in our house for most of his life, but unfortunatly knows very little about plants. Last year, (my first spring in this house) I noticed one small patch of some little blue flowers in the back yard. They came up in mid to late april, and seemed to come up from what looked like a patch of grass. I thougt they were pretty though and I investigated them a little by digging them up. I noticed that they were attached to a bunch of little bulbs. I ended up digging up the bulbs and putting them in the garden that I was starting. The flowers seem to be coming back this year! I also investigated the back yard a bit more searching for more of these flowers. I have found many patches of something that looks like grass but is a little thicker and sort of channeled. I dug into one patch and this too is attached to bulbs, but I don't see any of the flowers comint up from these yet.

From what I have looked around at in books and online, it seems that this flower may be grape hyacinth, but I can't find too much info about it. Does anyone have any experience with this plant?

Thanks,
Drea

[The Helpful Gardener]

Have this one in the garden at home and it is care free. Digging those bulbs and moving them didn't get all of them and now you have them in two places. Just keep that up and soon you'll have zillions of 'em (my math isn't so good, so zillions may take a while...)

[nwksangel]

Has anyone tried to plant these lovely little spring flowers into a pattern so that when they bloom on a large scale you can see some other pattern? I am wanting to do that with my college mascot, I have a large stencil that I have used in painting but am not sure how to do it with grape hyacinths and if they will stay in the pattern or over run it eventually. Any help is appreciated.

[The Helpful Gardener]

They'll stay pretty tight, but you'll need to do some selective removal in year three on; what mascot are you doing?

Scott

[nwksangel]

The mascot shape I am going to attempt is a KSU power cat, our new 'wildcat' design since becoming a football powerhouse over the past 10 years. I just think it would be cute as all get out to have a flower bed in that shape, there are 4 sections of varying sizes so I am not sure how big I can go. My hope is that one of these years I can do a very large scale planting so that it can be seen from a small crop plane flying overhead or viewed from the highway which is about 200 yards or less from the house. I live just a mile from the Nebraska border so the more purple power cat I can put on display the better, got to keep those cornhuskers in check.

[The Helpful Gardener]

My old high school mascot is a wildcat so I'm somewhat sympathetic, but I reserve my blue and whites for UCONN; Go Huskies!

Scott