And that is a perfect setting for them!! Not so much when they try to do the same thing in my tiny little garden.

But I'll wait until after they bloom to rip this year's marauders out.

Just do it before they set seed.

So beautiful in that woodland setting! They look suspiciously like the cute little grape hyacinth I took from a friend’s yard and who told me “ they do spread a little bit”. I blithely went away with a good bunch assuring her that I’d contain them to one area. I was still pulling huge bunches of them them out every spring when we sold that house 15 years later! Lesson learned- some plants are meant to be admired from afar....

PS - what’s the white flowering tree in background In second pic? A Dogwood maybe?

Since many of them in your pictures have a proportion of English bluebell characters visible what they actually are is the common (in cultivation) hybrid between that and Spanish bluebell called Hyacinthoides x massartiana. Which seems to be the majority of what is cultivated outside of situations where a point has been made of getting one of the parental species instead. And it is known how to tell the difference (bulb dealers are liable to supply incorrect material as English bluebells in particular - although it may also be that so called Spanish bluebells very often are not true either. I don't know because I have not paid as much attention to this aspect).

Slender, flaccid leaves, flower stalks curving at the top with flowers facing to one side, lobes of flowers rolled back: English bluebell

Broad, arching leaves, straight flower stalks with flowers arranged all the way around: Spanish bluebell

Characters intermediate or combinations of those of two preceding species: Hybrid bluebell

I always love your pictures, Christopher. Very much my preferred look in a garden.

These are genuine English bluebells displaying the characteristics outlined by Embothrium. They’re also a much deeper blue than the hybrids or the Spanish. (Taken 9 April 2021)

Christopher, how do you keep your path clear? Any tips?

@KW PNW Z8 Yes the grape hyacinth spread invasively too. The deer seem to really enjoy eating the foliage because it is up in the winter when most everything else is gone. That keeps them some what in check here, but spread they do. Yes that is a dogwood in bloom.

@Embothrium Bulb catalogs are the origin of all these bluebells. Bulbarella being who she is would look at the catalogs and go, "Oh, I don't have that one. I need that" and order away. There could be Spanish, English and the hybrid here all interbreeding now. There are some of them very distinctly twice the size of the others. To try and ID them correctly in this garden would be for crazy making. I have read an article or two over concern for the purity of English Bluebells in GB because of the invading Spanish hordes.

@floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK The mother of one of my clients smuggled in what are supposed to be proper English Bluebells. I snapped a pic of them last week so she could send it back to England. If they are imposters, I am staying mum.

@kitasei2 I keep the paths clear with a weed whacker and that means bluebells and anything else in them gets whacked. I had to get over any concern for that is a good plant. There are always plenty more. Walking the paths consistently also go a long way towards keeping them open. The deer and all the other varmints help with that too.

Close to the genuine article, with a good proportion of native ‘blood’, but I’d say they’re probably hybrids.

Yep.

I won't be telling Maggie the English Bluebells her mother smuggled over have been tainted. They are just like the ones in the Bluebell Woods her father took her to when she was a little girl.

Love the tossing the seeds to get it to look fabulous like this. I want to try this sometime.