Botany

Tips on how/where to cultivate a whole field of bluebells


Hello botanists,

I don’t know if any of you have seen the movie Big Fish, but there’s a scene where to charm his love interest, Ewan McGregor plants a whole field of her favorite flower.

I was thinking about doing this for my girlfriend, whose flower of choice is bluebells. I live in central North Carolina, and from my research, they should fit fine in our ecosystem, but I wanted to get some much needed guidance from some professionals on if this is something I should do, and how I could go about doing this.

I’m not sure if there are any laws in place against this, like if I can just go to any field and plant a comical amount of bluebells, but if y’all
could help me out, I think it’d make for an unforgettable gift for my girlfriend.

by i_am_corbin

2 Comments

  1. s1neztro

    Ask a farmer or friend with a lot of land other than that find someone to whole sale you blue bell seeds/ bulbs expect to work on it a lot it’ll take a couple months work of care and tending to get a whole fields worth

  2. peardr0p

    You might get some good tips in r/gardening etc

    My experience of bluebells is that you need to plant the bulbs between now and December for blooms the following spring, or wait and plant pre-sprouted bulbs in early spring

    They also need shade, being a woodland plant, so you’d need to find a suitable field for them to grow well

    Apparently, they don’t always flower their first year, so it may be a longer-term plan

    [UK resource, but this link has a lot of useful info](https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/gardening-tips/how-to-grow-bluebells-in-your-own-garden)

    Edit: there’s also a North Caroline native, *Mertensia virginica*, which also [prefers partial to full shade](https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/mertensia-virginica/)

    Might be worth making sure you know exactly which kind of bluebell yr gf is into, as there are also Spanish Bluebells 😊

Write A Comment

Pin