It started with a media release that I was about to delete, but first I needed to google a term I’d never heard before: stinzen gardens. The release concerned bulb planting, so this seemed like something I should know.
After much clicking and browsing, the results were perplexing. Stinzen is Frisian for “brick house.” But stinzen plants/stinzenplanten/stinzen gardens (pick your fave) have nothing to do with bricks or houses, except that they may appear near one. The phrase is applied to a vast group of smaller bulbs—galanthus, species tulips (like those above), scilla, small allium, fritillaria, crocus, chionodoxa, eranthis, small narcissus, and more—that are more likely to naturalize and can create a wildflower field effect when planted en masse in front of a country estate (or similar structure). The name was first applied to Dutch estates with brick houses, where such plantings had gone wild and created a picturesque effect. The idea for us is that we could also create such effects in front of our modest properties.
If it works, that is. Ideally, the bulbs would come up on schedule, starting with snowdrops and ending with, I’d guess, alliums. If planted in grass, mowing would need to wait until every bulb was good and done. And that’s where warning signal #1 goes off. First off, planting bulbs in established turfgrass is not so easy. And even smaller varieties like these do have foliage that will get crappy-looking as time goes by. On one site, lily of the valley was suggested as an inclusion. What a mess that would be!
I’ve tried this, sort of. (I do have a brick house after all.) I plant snowdrops, scilla, eranthis, species tulips, chionodoxa, erythronium, muscari (not on most stinzen lists, why?), and a few others. There is no grass; the bulbs are succeeded by shade perennials and shrubs. Not at all stinzen-y. (as you see in this back bed)
This is one of those things that seems great on paper and on websites with images like this:
It seems as though you would need a big space. A fully staffed botanical gardens could likely pull it off. The initial planting would be a lot of work and the mowing (you’d have to) wouldn’t be too much fun. And I wonder about the effect if too many different varieties are included. I’ve planted so many bulbs in the hopes that different types would come up at the same time, creating impressive combos and contrasts, but, more often than not, it just doesn’t work.
Think of all the gardeners these estates must have had. So long, stinzen. I just don’t have the staff.
I have something like that in my lawn; it’s called clover. A field of white that’s easy to mow. Obviously, I never planted it. However, clover does fix nitrogen in the soil, so I don’t mind. Wasn’t there a song (I think from “Oklahoma”) that wished “may your forty acres soon be fields of clover”?
And after
So much of gardening ends up on the compost heap of “I just don’t have the staff.” How wise of you to recognize the limits of that before too much money and energy gets wasted.
I wonder if the typically cool springs in The Netherlands make this possible. Our spring weather in southern Ontario is much more erratic with hot temps arriving too soon to sustain this. Thanks for introducing the Frisian word stinzen!
I had never heard the term “stinzen garden” funnily enough, I have a brick house that is going on 100 years old and lots of minor bulbs.
I have a naturalized planting of Muscari and many of my neighbors have crocus lawns they inherited from previous owners. We are in the DC-areas – so definitely not cool springs. The key is you cannot irrigate your lawn or the area you are letting the bulbs naturalize in or they will rot over the summer months.
See photos at: https://washingtongardener.blogspot.com/search?q=crocus+lawn
And then there are the squirrels, they get the bulbs. After that comes the rabbits, who sample the flowers.
You forgot deer. I am in NW Ontario and most of the good plants are behind tall fencing. There are more deer in town than the country.
You don’t need any staff or a grassed space to utilize the concepts of a stinzen garden. Your own bulb plantings show that. You can always ask Bulbarella Stinze how to. She has no lawn, no staff and no fancy manor in the middle of all her bulbs.
I have a stinzen garden, kind of. I’ve planted crocuses and chiondoxa in my lawn for over ten years. I plant more every fall and long ago lost count of how many bulbs and corms I’ve planted. Yes, I get a blister on the palm of my hand from shoving that rockery trowel in the ground to plant each bulb individually. I am also sure some of the bulbs get eaten, but after ten years of doing this and having the bulbs begin to naturalize, there are enough of them that they can’t eat all of them. I do have to wait a bit longer to mow it all off, but so far, it hasn’t been a problem. Earliest crocuses come up in mid-late February and bloom in a few waves, then the Chionodoxa take over by late March-early April. The bees arrive as soon as the flowers do! It is not a plant once and forget it kind of garden project (unless you have staff) but a good long-term project you can add to every year.
here in CT this is quite common and does not require staff. Plant the bulbs, lave them alone, mow when their foliage dies back and continue to fall – or don’t mow and have a meadow
Squirrels have dug up my Tommies to stinzen the neighbors’ yards. If I waited for the foliage to brown off before mowing we would be celebrating the 4th of July b