We’re delighted to introduce Emily Tasker, who many of you may know from Instagram as @my_cotswold_garden .
Based in the beautiful Cotswolds area of outstanding natural beauty, Emily grows flowers in abundance, creates stunning floral designs, and is also a passionate beekeeper.
With a background in graphic design, she now pours her creativity into the garden, cultivating beauty for both a happy mind and soul. We’re proud to collaborate with Emily, who also creates beautiful content for our own Instagram account @dutchgrown_europe, inspiring our community with her unique eye for flowers.
We recently sat down with her for a special interview to talk all things flower bulbs, from her favourite varieties to her tips for planting and design.
What are your favourite flower bulbs to grow in the Cotswolds, and why?
I absolutely love all flower bulbs and have many favourites every season! I have a lot of grasses in my garden which turn shades of ochre and gold in the autumn and I absolutely adore growing nerines next to them which are Barbie pink against these brown tones. They look absolutely amazing. I love to grow crocuses, fritillaria, I love quail and minnow narcissus, blue camassia, and some of the tiny ornamental tulips are absolutely incredible. Then alliums. I adore schubertii and allium hair at the front and middle of my borders!! And sphaerocephalon everywhere of course. Too many to mention. All of them! When I had a tiny garden in London I tended to plant more in containers, with a few reliable perennial bulbs in the border. Doing the containers in the city was something I looked forward to and cherished every year. It was my nature connection. With a small container or small city border you need to plan carefully what colours you’re going to want to see the following spring. For me that’s always some pinks and white! I can really recommend doing a bulb lasagne if you’re in this situation too with a small city courtyard garden or balcony. Now I can express myself even more with different areas in my garden in the Cotswolds. It gives me huge amounts of joy and pleasure as it did in London with less space to work with.
No matter the scale, you can do amazing things with bulbs!
Do you have a go-to planting combination that always works in your garden?
I like to mix up my planting, so I don’t have any specific rules other than that I look carefully at when things bloom. If you choose carefully you can have flowers blooming all year (with December and January blooming indoors). I also choose flowers based on how we use the house and the weather. In April, when it’s raining a lot I plant many of my April flowering bulbs near the house so that me and my family can still enjoy them even when it’s raining. Over the winter, indoor paperwhite narcissus and amaryllis white nymph with branches from the garden on a shelf look absolutely phenomenal. And you get your gardening fix throughout the winter too!
Which bulb do you think is the most underrated, and which is the one you couldn’t live without?
Ornithogalum is completely underrated! It’s a stunning stunning spring flower Some of the Dutch irises I think are underrated. They have the most incredible patterning on the petals. They look like tigers! After a long winter in the countryside as we have here, they are almost so beautiful they don’t look real. They are sensational. One I couldn’t live without would be narcissus. With careful curation you can have flowers from February to April. Plus they are just really cheerful happy flowers.
How do you plan your bulb planting so that you have colour from early spring through to summer?
I don’t plan much to be honest, I just choose the bulbs I love. By dotting them through my borders which have evergreens as well as herbaceous perennials and trees, I am delighted when I see the bulbs come up, many of which I have completely forgotten I had planted in the winter. I also choose bulbs quite carefully based on what else is going on in the garden at the time. So say for example the time I have blossom on my cherry trees, I will carefully choose flower bulbs which look harmonious with the blossom, for example so you get an amazing overall impact from the space as a whole, not just from looking down at a border.
Do you prefer planting bulbs in borders, pots, or naturalising them in grass?
I love all 3 of course! It’s easier to do pots because being a container they are more manageable and less hard work than planting in borders or in grass. My problem is with grass, is that my children run on the the lawn during the early spring, and therefore any flowers are at risk of being flattened. But I have some other areas I plan to naturalise with fritillaria and narcissus, and these won’t get trampled next year!
What’s your best tip for beginners planting bulbs for the first time?
For first time gardeners I would choose an easy bulb that doesn’t require planting in a particular way, so that you are guaranteed to get a result. I’d also choose a bulb that are resistant to frost, mice, rats and squirrels such as a narcissus or allium. It can be quite demoralising not getting the result you want if you are new to gardening, so you want to choose something that is easy to grow! The key thing is not to be afraid of it not looking good or making mistakes. Just go for it. Over time you’ll find your own style. The key is getting hooked on gardening in the first place! and making things easy for yourself is the best way to make that happen.
How do you deal with challenges like squirrels, slugs, or unpredictable British weather?
For slugs, I always plant tasty things into pots first, where they can be placed on a shelf or outdoor table, and put on lots of early growth without being munched before they have even got started. Also I treated my garden this year with nematodes because I had such a terrible time last year when it was very wet and I had a real slug problem. For squirrels I would simply layer on gravel or grit on the top of pots with tulips or crocuses - both these bulbs are caviar to squirrels!! Squirrels don’t like burrowing in grit. I always choose hardy plants which don’t mind heavy frosts; and if a particular part of my garden gets a lot of wind for example, I’ll just make sure I plant accordingly. If something isn’t happy, then I’ll just move it to a different location that is more sheltered, gets more shade, more sun, etc.
Are there any insider tricks you’ve picked up for getting the very best display from tulips or daffodils?
I don’t know about insider tricks but if it were down to me, I would always plan to plant double what you think you need. Tulips looking amazing en masse for example. With daffodils, look carefully at the varieties you choose, and plant other bulbs that complement your colours. So you might choose a baby blue muscari with a baby yellow narcissus for example.
If you had to pick just three varieties to recommend to someone starting out, which would they be?
Alliums - easy to grow and they grow tall and impressive! Some of the big tulips like the jumbo varieties from Dutch Grown. They are amazing!! Just keep your pots watered in the early spring even if it rains, and you’ll be rewarded by ultra long tulip stems!
As a floral designer, how do you choose which bulbs to grow for cutting and arranging?
I love to use flowers with things I forage from the hedgerows where I live and this is an amazing thing to do in autumn and winter. You have a lot of wild clematis and branches in the cold months which look sensational with paperwhites (indoor narcissus bulbs). In the spring time, the white Thalia narcissus look stunning in an arrangement with Spanish bluebells which bloom at the same time and last well in a vase. Thalia are scented too. I make sure I plant enough of everything so that I have enough flowers for my borders as well as for any floral design work I’m doing at the time! I don’t cut alliums for arrangements as they smell of onions! I do however leave the seedheads to form on the plant and then remove them to decorate my home. The most spectacular allium for this job in my opinion is a schubertii. They look like a Firework.
Do you have a favourite bulb colour palette for your arrangements?
I love pastel tulips all mixed up and pastel galilee anemone. I have a lot of blue flowers in my spring garden and therefore must really adore this colour too! It is a dazzling colour after being starved of colour all winter! My favourite is a Mr Fokker anemone which I grow every year. I love it. I also really love just white and green! I have a lot of pure white Thalia in my borders and they are really special. They’re Beautiful!
What’s the most unusual way you’ve ever used bulbs in a design?
I like to make Japanese moss ball kokedama and use my spring bulbs for this! I love using snakes head fritillaria in these. Being a damp soil and shade loving flower they love the conditions for a kokedama. I love the contrast between the sculptural stem and the moss. And then the nodding snakes head with its checkerboard petals. This is where for me, a plant becomes art.
If you could create a brand-new tulip or daffodil, what would it look like?
If I were to create a new tulip, it would have the flare of an Estella rijnveld, with the magenta colour of a memphis and the height of an apricot impression. The new daffodils on offer from Dutch grown this year plus the varieties available already make designing a new daffodil really really difficult, as there is already so much to choose from!
Be honest: how many bulbs have you ordered in one season at your most “dangerous” moment?
I have ordered thousands of bulbs, I do it every year. I can’t help myself there are just too many good ones!
Do you ever sneak in a few extra bulbs when no one’s looking, or is your garden an open confession of bulb-addiction?
I am constantly getting my hands on more and more bulbs throughout the cold season. Right up to the absolute latest you can plant I just keep going back for more I just can’t help myself! It gives us all joy to see the results of my hard work in the cold wet muddy winter! Just be sure you can get them all in the ground or into pots. As they won’t do anything left on a shelf.
If flower bulbs could talk, which one would have the sassiest personality?
I’m going to choose Estella rijnveld- one of my absolute favourite tulips. She is a bit of a diva. You can imagine her on stage in a smoky back street bar in the 50s in Paris. Maybe she’d be a jazz singer. She certainly is jazzy!!
