Here are 6 easy spring flowers you can grow from bulbs this year. Flowering from early spring to the beginning of summer, these blooms will bring life back into your garden after winter. Crucially, they are all hardy bulbs that are easy to grow, just like supermarket garlic (trust me). Many of them with naturalise too, which means that they’ll multiply each time they grow back year after year.
I’ve added links to these particular varieties available at DutchGrown, as I love the quality of the bulbs they have and their delivery options. However, you can find so many other cultivars with different colours to suit your garden style online. Don’t let me limit you!
1. Allium ‘Mount Everest’
The round globe of flowers always makes me characterise alliums as the dahlia’s of spring! Flowering from late spring into early summer months, allium adds height and elegance to your garden. It has elegant green foliage and tall slender stems with a round ball of tiny flowers emerging at the top. This particular allium is called Mount Everest and it features snowy white flowers.
Available at DutchGrown, this allium is notoriously hardy and easy to grow. It also attracts bees and butterflies to your garden as an added bonus, plus it will naturalize (multiply) each growing year.
2. Hyacinth ‘Jan Bos’
Next up is a lovely option for containers, patio pots and window boxes. Hyacinths are iconic in spring, blooming from early to mid-spring for up to 12 weeks in bright colours. They are known to be hardy and easy to grow, so they are ideal for beginners. The variety I have chosen is the Hyacinth Jan Bos from DutchGrown. It is a wonderful shade of carmine red that really pops against the typical whites, blues and pale purples that are common in the springtime.
As with all easy spring flowers, the best time to plant them is in autumn ready for the following year – this applies to both flowerbeds and pot-grown flowers.
3. Anemone ‘de Caen Mr. Fokker’
Once you’ve finished chuckling at the unfortunate name of this flower, take a moment to appreciate the beauty of it! Anemones are a firm favourite of mine and a staple of cottagecore. The anemone ‘de Caen Mr. Fokker’ is an effortless deep violet blue bloom with a poppy-like appearance. If planted in the autumn, anemones should flower in the early to mid-spring. However, you can also plant them in April for summer blooms or July for autumn blooms.
This particular variety is available at DutchGrown. I am particularly fond of this gardening site because they provide high-quality and hardy bulbs. This anemone is marked as easy to grow, deer-resistant, and suitable for rockeries.
4. Dwarf Iris ‘Katharine Hodgkins’
Alliums remain my favourite tall flowers for spring, but the best small easy spring flowers to grow from bulbs have to be dwarf iris. Low to the ground, they have distinctive flowers and come in vibrant shades of white, yellow, purple and inky blue. This particular variety is recommended by the Royal Horticultural Society with the Award of Garden Merit.
Katharine Hodgkins dwarf iris have pale blue blooms with inky dark blue spots and pretty yellow stains. They are one of the most reliable spring flowers and come back year after year with no maintenance required.
5. Camassia Esculenta ‘Camas Lily’
The Camas Lily, also known as Camassia Esculenta or the Indian Hyacinth, is the perfect option if you want to grow something different without putting in too much effort. These easy spring bulb flowers bloom with blue star-like flowers atop slender stems that can reach 60cm in height. They look almost like stretched out hyacinths, but with far more elegance and grace in my opinion.
Available at DutchGrown, you can plant Camas Lily in the autumn and watch them grow back year after year, as they naturalise particularly well in the UK. They’re also reasonably priced for such an exotic-looking spring flower.
6. Chionodoxa Lucilea ‘Violet Beauty’
The last easy spring flower to grow is Chionodoxa Lucilea, also known as Glory of the Snow as it blooms early in spring when the last snows are still fading away. Providing ground cover, it grows with clumps of star-like flowers with tiny yellow centres. The blooms on this variety, Violet Beauty, are a soft lilac shade that’s really pretty balanced against the snowdrops and bare earth.
As with all the flowers on my list, it is hardy and easy to grow in the UK. Available from DutchGrown, Chionodoxa Lucilea naturalises well and is very affordable, if you want to grow a pretty garden without spending a fortune.
More Easy Spring Flowers to Grow
That’s the end of my list! The beauty of bulbs, however, is that they are easy to grow in general. Just take a look at my 10 Best Autumn Planting Bulbs for an example of other pretty flowers you can grow. As always, the trick to spring blooms is to get planting in October and November.
I highly recommend DutchGrown, but you can find flower bulbs on so many sites online as well as supermarkets and gardening centres across the UK. Happy gardening!