I hope you'll post a pic come spring. I have some wood hyacinth planted between my Oaks rootflare and always look forward to their bloom. Bulbs really make me happy after a long winter.

I will look forward to photos too. I have always had irises (Douglas since I'm in NorCal and Dutch just because) and naked ladies (I think most people call them belladonna). I haven't wanted to do more because we have gophers galore. This year we put gopher wire under white a bit that we remodeled, so I plunked a bunch of asiatic lilies, freesias and parrot tulips in the ground too.

If possible, maybe put gopher wire under so you only have to worry about deer?

I think the gophers around here will end up chewing through the hard netting... they seem to be on steroids... but I'm hoping it takes a few years.

Freesias are supposed to be gopher resistant. On the other hand lilies and tulips are gopher candy. All the bulbs I planted out there should be safe. Oh, I might get a nibble or two, but most of the plants should survive and some will even naturalize. The hyacinths will probably dwindle over time.

I have several hundred wire gopher baskets in my garden. I should own stock in the company! Here I deliberately chose not to use any baskets because they would be a serious tripping hazard. It is a narrow edge, 1.5 to 2 feet wide, and in places could be a dangerous fall down to the road below. Sometimes I imagine neighbors shaking their heads when they see me working up there.

How lovely this will be! I can (and have) grown most of these and can tell you that most of these are deer and vole resistant here. If you can grow certain alliums or a little bulb called ipheon, they also seem to be, as well as being able to handle dry shade. I will say that my amaryllis have suffered deer damage this year for the first time but the deer are starving. I hope that you will be able to post pictures when they bloom.

It sounds like a good idea, and I hope your bulbs are lovely! I love them too, but unfortunately they're difficult in the big garden, where the soil's too heavy for most, and where they get eaten by mice and boars. However we have a wealth of native small woodland bulbs and early-spring flowers, and a woodland to put them in. I was totally blown away when I child I know came back from her friend's grandma's house with a bouquet picked from the grandma's woods: snowdrops, snowflakes, scillas, hepaticas, fritillarias, anemones: all native. I'm trying to introduce them all. (Oh, and poet's narcissus and hellebores.)

I like hellebores myself. Lemecdutex of this forum once upon a time introduced me to them in his previous garden in northern California. He has moved on to another garden since, but seeing his garden there opened my eyes to their possibilities for a shady edge. Then I dug mine out when we had puppies here, and the foxgloves, too. Alas, puppies chew everything, and these plants are toxic. Now that the dogs are older they still chew many things I don't want them to, but they leave plants alone, except for fruit and occasional blades of grass. I have let the white foxgloves and hellebores gradually come back from seeds or bits of root in the soil. In time I may even start planting more. I got the idea of white foxglove spires from another former poster here, Jon in Wessex, who told us that at Mottisfont the gardens are accented with white-only foxgloves. I found some lovely foxgloves at Annie's Annuals called 'Snow Thimble' that are pure white, without even the freckles in the throats of the blooms. I would not have minded the freckles, so long as the blooms were reliably white. It takes only one pink foxglove to turn the next generation multi-colored. It has taken me a long time to learn the value of white in a landscape. For many years I turned my nose up at it. Gardening can be humbling.

Melissa, I love your idea of seeding your garden with native woodland bulbs. It sounds absolutely magical. While we do have native bulbs here, I have not done that. Our native bulbs are not easy to source. However, you have inspired me. I'm going to keep my eyes open for native plant sales and see if I can find some to plant in my wilder areas outside the fence. The only ones I see very often are the Douglas irises, but I don't think I have exactly the right site for them, a bit too dry.

Oh, and I must say that while I complain about the gophers at deer, I am very happy that at least I don't need to worry about boars! There are introduced feral pigs in some parts of the Bay Area, but fortunately, not my part.

Rosefolly ... Leonine Iris has some pretty amazing native pacific coast irises. Sales open back up in April. Here's what was available last year... http://www.leonineiris.com/l9i_downloads/2016_Leonine_Iris_Price_List_with_Photos.pdf

They look beautiful! Sad to say that I don't believe I have the right conditions for them. We are semi-arid here, averaging 15" of rain a year, and some years receive quite a bit less. I have tried and failed a couple of times. I like the Canyon Snow especially well.

Quite an impressive collection of tropical fruit trees you have there!

Freesia, what heaven. One of the things I miss most from California.

I like the sound of your garden, sultry. Do you know bananas grow here? I saw one yesterday in the middle of a wood, looking amazingly undomesticated. There was even a local banana that fruited in this notably warm year. Gingers are among the few plants I envy my sisters for in their north Florida gardens (also blueberries, scented deciduous azaleas, and acidophile magnolias).

I had no idea banana would grow in the middle of a wood in Italy! What fun it is to learn so many new things here!

It was one of those weird plant sightings, Cori Ann, definitely way outside normal.

Good luck with your native bulb search, Paula! I too like hellebores, a plant that does very well here. Most of our garden plants, forms of H. orientalis, come from starts from the gardens of friends. We have two natives, the prettier, and less common in our parts, being H. viridis. It has a very fresh, refined look.

There are some bananas that can take cooler temperatures. Musa Bajoo is known to do okay in the Seattle WA area and can supposedly overwinter with some mulch for protection in -20F. I don't think the bananas are edible type though.

I wish I could grow bearded iris here. The Louisiana types do okay but most the others don't like the humidity.

Here's some random bulbs that pop up every year in the middle of the front of our property far from any flowerbeds. This first orange daylily, I had one like it in a front flowerbed then it totally disappeared only to reappear about an acre away. Probably a wild bird spread the seed or maybe one of the chickens lol. No clue where the pink flower came from lol.