That's a lot of bulbs!

Ever wondered what a twenty second silent movie taken from the seat of a moving tractor of a college frontage bristling with early spring bulbs looks like? Well that's what you can see in my little film here. It actually looks a whole lot better than this, I used an old digital camera, so the quality is not good, the colours don't stand out too well and I was probably moving too quickly.

I might try out this experiment again, so check back for future mini clips. In the past nine years we estimate that we have planted about 27 thousand bulbs. What you can't really see here is the variety. On this frontage we have planted about a thousand Primulas and about 9 thousand Crocus. The white pools you can see are Crocus ' Miss Vane', there is also Helebore, Lords and Ladies, tiny Scillas, Winter Aconites, Daffodills( still to flower), Cyclaemon and Anemone Blanda.

We have deliberately left a large proportion of the Autumn leaves to build up under the trees, which is more in keeping with a naturalistic approach and saves on the heavy work of shifting it to the compost heaps. The trees you see here are Horse Chestnuts. One late Autumn a couple of years back when we were bent into a bitter wind bearing sideways hail as we planted bulbs on the college front, a car full of dodgy characters asked us to give them the directions to the Court buildings, they also asked if we were doing community service!

No, we do this for fun, seriously! Lots of people passing by stop and take photos here which has been by far our biggest compliment.