Photos by Lyndon Penner
Fritillaria flowering indoors? Who knew? Place potted bulbs in a sunny window in spring.
Lyndon Penner, head gardener at Riding Mountain National Park, in his kitchen with potted daffodils in full bloom.
Every year, Riding Mountain National Park puts on a gorgeous spring show with flowering bulbs. Inspirational plantings of tulips, daffodils, alliums, fritillaria, squills, crocuses, and more provide spectacular sweeps of colour. The show keeps getting better and better every year as bulbs planted in previous years become well established and multiply. Of course, more bulb varieties are being added to the gardens every year to the delight of visitors each spring.
Last summer, Lyndon Penner, head gardener, ordered an array of spring flowering bulbs — about 1500 — from several different suppliers. “I always like to add flowers to the gardens at RMNP that are unusual, special, and a little bit unexpected,” says Penner. Naturally, things don’t always go as planned which is why 500 of those interesting bulbs are blooming their heads off right now in Penner’s kitchen, bathroom, living room, and dining room. Here’s what happened.
Intrigued by the selection of bulbs offered by a company on the West Coast, Penner contacted the company to confirm when his order would be shipped. Since his two assistant lead gardeners, Nancy MacKay and Megan Juniper Dawn, complete their seasonal work by the end of September, Penner needed to have all the bulbs planted in the gardens by mid-September. He was assured that his order would arrive in plenty of time. It didn’t.
Poor weather conditions in the Netherlands during the spring and summer growing seasons in 2023 resulted in shipping delays last fall and indeed, have led to a tulip bulb shortage for 2024. “I waited and waited,” says Penner. Thankfully, the other bulb orders arrived, and Penner, MacKay, and Dawn were able to plant close to a thousand bulbs by the end of September.
“I was leaving Manitoba on November 1st,” says Penner. “My order of 500 bulbs arrived on October 30th.” Like many gardeners in the fall, Penner enjoys planting a single pot of tulips or a pot of daffodils which can be stored in a cold storage room, a root cellar, or in a refrigerator. “You just chill the bulbs and then in March or April, you pull them out and they will grow and flower in a container. It’s easy.” But these were 500 bulbs and Penner was hours away from leaving town.
“I got up at six in the morning, made myself a pot of coffee and potted bulbs like my life depended on it.” He packed the bulbs cheek by jowl into every available six-inch or eight-inch container. “It was just a question of how many bulbs I could fit into each pot – about six or so.”
Penner placed the potted bulbs in a refrigerator in staff housing and left a note requesting that the fridge not be unplugged during the winter. In the middle of November, he received a message that the bulbs had to be moved to a fridge in a different building. When Penner arrived back in Manitoba in February, he headed straight for the fridge. “As it turned out, the potted bulbs were put into trays and placed in two fridges,” says Penner. Not all the bulbs survived because moisture in one of the fridges caused the trays to fill up with water and some of the bulbs rotted. Penner removed them and took the rest home.
“I filled every single windowsill with potted bulbs and my goodness, those bulbs started sprouting and the new growth shot up like a cork out of a champagne bottle,” says Penner. By sheer chance, says Penner, he recently rented a place in Onanole that has big bright windows on three sides of the kitchen and dining room. “It is almost like having a sunroom. But there is also a big window in the bathroom and there are half a dozen potted bulbs blooming in there, too.”
Watering the dozens of potted bulbs has been an adventure. “I figure out who needs to be watered and give them a good soak in the bathtub before I go to bed so they can do all their dripping and draining overnight and then the next morning I rearrange them to optimize the light they are receiving. It is time-consuming but it’s also been very enjoyable. My house is surrounded by snow and bare trees but indoors it feels like a mini version of the Netherlands. I have a massive bouquet of tulips flowering in my living room, daffodils in my bathroom, fritillaria in the dining room, two dozen pots of tulips in my living room, plus squills and crocuses.”
As the bulbs finish flowering, Penner removes the spent flowers. He has also been giving each pot a weekly dose of fertilizer so that the bulbs get nice and plump. “Once the leafy portions wither and dry up, I will stop watering.” Penner plans to store the dormant bulbs in a cool, dark place and in September they will be planted in the gardens at RMNP.
Penner is glad that the allium bulbs that he ordered last fall have already been planted in the gardens. Alliums are excellent nectar sources in spring for bees and butterflies and visitors to RMNP are enthralled every spring by the allium display. “We planted quite a few giant alliums last year. There are species of alliums that produce outrageously large heads of flowers – some of them are half as big as a soccer ball — and they also have the added benefit of really showy seedheads. We planted several Allium christophii (Star of Persia) which looks like a sparkler on a birthday cake and of course lots of Purple Sensation allium.
Lyndon is partial to daffodils, especially varieties with white flowers. In his first year as head gardener at RMNP, he planted Narcissus poeticus, also known as the poet’s daffodil or pheasant’s eye. “It is a small, elegant daffodil with white flowers and an orange eye. Last spring they were like a twinkly blanket of white stars through the gardens early in the year.” Penner says there are lots of so-called pink daffodils, but they are actually soft salmon or have coral and peachy tones. Narcissus Pink Pride, for example, produces white petals and a pastel apricot cup in the centre. Penner is looking forward to seeing British Gamble daffodils in bloom this spring. “The flowers are a bit ruffled, and the colour is a soft peachy pink.”
“We try to make sure that anything really unusual is planted close to the edge of a garden bed or walkway. We also like to tuck bulbs into unexpected places — like an Easter egg hunt — to surprise visitors,” says Lyndon Penner, head gardener. One of the surprises this spring includes dazzling blue camas (Camassia quamash) which Penner sourced from the Kootenay Native Plant Society.
colleenizacharias@gmail.com
For advice, ideas and tips to keep your outdoor and indoor plants growing, sign up to receive Winnipeg Gardener, a free monthly digital newsletter Colleen Zacharias writes for the Free Press at https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/newsletter/winnipeg-gardener
