Spring-flowering bulb foliage

I have a garden chock-full of bulbs that produce beautiful flowers every spring. Unfortunately, once the flowers are done blooming, the fading foliage makes it look like a garden full of sickly plants. I resist the temptation to cut back the leaves because they’re very important if I want to see healthy flowers from those bulbs again next year.

John Fech is an extension educator at the University of Nebraska. He says after blooming, the purpose of the leaves is to send sugars and carbohydrates down to the bulb for storage. Without the leaves, future plants will become weak.

"You generally won’t see a big difference from one year to the next if you cut off all that fading foliage, but gradually over time a bulb like a daffodil or a tulip is generally intended to be in the ground for 4-5 years," says Fech. "If you continually cut that foliage off, you’ll probably shorten the life down to more like a one-to-two, or three-year type of bulb."

So how long should you wait? Fech says when the leaves are down to about 40% green, they’re slacking off on their job and you can cut them back.

In the meantime, there are a couple of techniques for making the ratty foliage less visible and the flower bed more attractive.

"The first technique is really sort of just gathering the foliage up and tying it with a rubber band or something like that, just making it more compact. And, that really lessens the effect because you see less of it," he says. "The other technique is to cover up the fading bulb foliage by interplanting summer annuals in there like zinnias, or vinca, or something along those lines."

Adding mulch to the bed will also shift your attention away from the fading foliage.