Fall Bulb Design: 8 Easy, Colorful Combinations

Fall-planted bulbs are some of the easiest ways to add impactful color to your spring garden. As long as you live in a climate with an extended period of frozen ground over the winter (12 weeks or more), varieties like Tulips, Daffodils, Allium, Crocus, and more will thrive in your garden! These easy-to-grow bulbs offer up incredible color in the early-season landscape. We’ve put together some of our favorite combinations for fall planting and show you exactly how to recreate the look in your garden.

The Perennial Darwin Tulip Bulbs produce beautiful large 6” pyramid-shaped blooms. The Darwin Tulip is known as the perennial tulip because it comes back year after year. These tulips come in all colors and patterns and are one of the tallest tulips, making them the best tulip for cut flowers. 

You can achieve the look in this photo by planting 25-50 bulbs of each variety (Red Oxford and Golden Oxford Tulips) in your garden. Make sure to mix the bulbs up before planting so you have a nice compilation of red and yellow throughout the garden.

As you can see, this is a completely different look than above, but all done with Tulips! Pair two double late Tulip varieties together for an elegant, charming cottage-garden feeling. Or, plant our Double Late Tulip Mix for an easy way to get this look without having to design it yourself. You can achieve the look in this photo by planting 25-35 bulbs in your garden.

Double Late Tulips introduce romance and elegance to any garden. Their large, double-petaled blossoms are full and delicate, resembling peonies. These easy to grow bulbs bloom in late spring and are available in rich, single-colored varieties, bold bicolors, and gently tinged two-tones. Double Late Tulips perform best when sheltered from the wind and when planted in groups. Use them in flower beds, borders, and containers.

Plant en masse to create bold color blocking for a striking garden design. This is a great way to bring a formal, structured look to your garden, and it's sure to be a conversation starter! You can achieve this pristine look with 50-100 bulbs of each variety.

This fantastic orange/blue combination is easily re-created with a mix of Tulips and Hyacinths. The texture of both the Tulip petals and Hyacinths make for a fantastic mid-spring showing. Anemones are planted as low-growing blooms in the front. Achieve this look with our flower bulb mixes for a casual, colorful planting.

As you can see with this bold, colorful, and natural planting, you can create an entire garden bed with just Tulips and Daffodils and make it look interesting. This gardener played with bold colors and combined Lily Flowered Tulips, Darwin Tulips, and Jetfire Miniature Daffodils to create this look. Depending on the size of your garden, you could recreate this look with as little as one bag each of these varieties, up to as many as you’d like.

This is a favorite combination of ours and an instant way to turn your early spring garden into a showpiece. Both the Grape Hyacinths and most Miniature Daffodils are fragrant, making for a total sensory experience. Get this look with 25 of each type of bulbs, or plant our Woodland Mix for an easy way to achieve this combination in your spring garden.

By adding a unique variety like Crown Imperial to your Tulip and Daffodil planting, you can elevate the look and whimsy of your garden bed. This gardener used Double Daffodils, Tulips and Crown Imperial to achieve this colorful look. Although this garden is planted en masse, you can create the same look with one bag each of these varieties.

Alliums are a later-blooming Fall-Planted bulb, meaning it looks great paired with perennials like Bearded Iris, Poppies, and more. This sculptural beauty also looks fantastic planted in rows or groups on its own. Alliums are available in varying heights, so you can mix them or plant them in rows. We recommend planting 12 or more bulbs in one spot to create a whimsical look in the early summer garden.

We like to say that Fall Bulbs are as easy as “Dig, Drop, Done,” which means that you can put the extra time into really planning your design. The actual planting won’t take more than an afternoon so have fun creating a spring garden that represents you and your favorite colors.