In the first place not all bulb foliage is unattractive,You can work around your plantings with a little planning, after your tulips die back lift some of your bulbs and in their place plant with plants that fill out and bloom later in the season and so mask the leaves. OR sometimes I plant portulacca sets or nasturtium seed in a bulb garden, these tolerate drought add color and leaf out, so you won't worry about over watering your bulbs, and fill in your beds. No such thing as a rookie gardener just enjoy every minute of it . . . just think of the new places you can put the bulbs you are moving!!!!

This is a great idea Kathleen! I didn't think about just removing a portion of the bulbs once they've died back. I'll have to look into the portulacca and nasturtium, thanks again!

I have come to view dying, decaying leaves, and seed heads, as attractive, beautiful in their own way.

Watching films by Andrei Tarkovsky helped. He made decay and muckiness and slime and dirt and all that part of his aesthetic. I think of him as the closest the late 20th century had to Vincent Van Gogh: a true visionary who can change the way you see the world.

And Yeats's "Crazy Jane" poems also enter that zone where vision is re-arranged.

If you do gardening, then decay, dirt and smelly stuff and ickiness, etc. become very familiar. Why not accept them and make their beauty part of the aesthetic?

P.S. Mistakes are also part of the aesthetic. Reading "War and Peace" helped there: one of the main characters, Pierre, is a great bumbler who allows himself to follow whims into blunders; and through these comes closer to wisdom.

This post was edited by Eimer on Sat, Oct 25, 14 at 11:37

Last fall I planted the entire front of the fence that faces the road with daffs not thinking about the dying foliage in spring. I simply dug them up carefully in the spring when the leaves started decaying, and put them in holding containers, covered them with dirt, and placed them out of sight. Then I replanted the area with annuals.

Happy gardening! :-)

I think that possibly the requirement for bulbs to be dry in Summer is over emphasised. In my climate Summer can be very wet so bulbs just have to put up with it - and they do. It is important to differentiate between bulbs too. Daffodils, snowdrops and grape hyacinths do not imo mind moisture in summer. Tulips are fussier but they are harder to perennialise all round anyway. My garden is tiny and all my beds include permanent bulbs and perennials layered and mixed together. I don't grow annuals in the ground so can't comment on them.

28 years ago, immediately after moving in to this house in October, I planted a few hundred daffodils.

Since then I have gradually expanded my flower beds until there is no lawn left. I have added perennials, annuals and thousands more bulbs around the first set of daffodils. Those first daffodils have multiplied happily and are still growing strong today.

Don't worry too much about bulbs in the ground. Plant something between them and over them to draw attendtion from dying leaves.

Not all bulb foliage looks ugly. Grape hyacinth has somewhat pretty, grassy looking leaves.

Lots of people deliberately plant perennials on top of bulbs to hide the foliage. It is NOT necessarily true you can't plant on top of them.

Trimming the foliage doesn't immediately kill bulbs...it prevents them from storing up energy for next year so you get fewer (or no) blooms next year, but many bulbs can survive a couple years of this treatment.

Anyway, here are your options:
1.) Just plant whatever annuals you like on top of the bulbs. You will kill many of the bulbs, but a few will survive.
Think of the bulbs as annuals. How much did you spend on them?
2.) Plant drought loving flowers, like lavender, Echinacea, or baptista australis. They won't need much water. You'll physically dig up a few bulbs planting them, but daffodils and muscari usually survive if you just stick them back in the ground when you accidentally dig them up.
3.) Plant the few soggy soil loving bulbs next year...like liatris or camassia quamash and a few kind of lilies. Plant them deep so you can plant stuff over them next year. (Big bulbs will often survive being planted a bit deep).

As others have said:

1) Planting over the bulbs will not likely kill them. Planting big bulbs like lilies or the taller tulips a bit deeper than recommended will allow other plants to be planted over them. Even with more shallowly planted bulbs, seeds of annuals like alyssum can be scattered to form a carpet over them. Or annuals could be planted in any spaces between groups of bulbs.

2) Dryness over the summer is not necessary for most of the common bulbs, IME. I have, over the years, planted many tulips, daffodils, crocus, hyacinths, alliums, and lilies in beds which receive water all summer long. They all came back year after year. Some of the tulips eventually disappeared but that may well have been the result of vole depredation.

I'm a bit late to the party (thread) but hopefully someone else can get benefit in the future.

I think watering bulbs as part of watering other plants (later perennials or annuals planted near the bulbs that have finished growing) is better than forgetting and ignoring those bulbs until the following year.

Also, there is a planting scheme where one plants all different kinds of perennials together. Early, middle, and late-blooming perennials come to mind. In this way, the same spot gives a constant scene of growth and the new leaves and flowers can also hide some of the old ones going away.

Another scheme is to plant the same perennials, but at slighly different depths (as long as it is all within the average depth that the bulb should be). This way, you get the same plants, but they don't all flower at the same time, and you can enjoy those same plants for a longer time.

The reason I bring up the planting schemes is that it's just an evidence to say, you certainly can mix up bulbs, annuals, and other plants and keep watering the ones that are growing without too much concern for the hidden bulbs under the ground.

Just keep in mind, of course, that if there's too much water for a growing plant, and the soil is too wet/soggy/indundated for long periods of time, it may also affect any bulbs in the ground.

So other than that, I'm sure you can feel free to plant and grow a variety of perennials, including bulb plants, and annuals together.