English vs Spanish bluebells
My garden has a lot of bluebells, English and Spanish varieties. I'm starting to think I should dig out as many of the spanish variety as possible (not planted by me I add). They seem so thugish compared to english variety and I know they can smother them.
Does anyone else do this ? And had any success of getting rid of them ?
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I'm in the process of digging out Spanish bluebells even though they are very pretty.
I would love to know how they got into my garden.
A constant battle, I hope someone has an answer!
I'm also digging up the Spanish ones as I have English bluebells in our wood and don't want them to takeover/spread to those.
I've still got some coming through but nowhere near as many as last year, when I started digging them out. I'd guess I'm seeing about 70% less than last year. The leaves snap easily off the bulb so I'm assuming those coming back are because of it. And like most things here in my garden, I'm treating this as a 2-3 season (ie year) project
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I know I should dig them out but I love the pink and white ones.
One side of my front garden has loads of bluebells. I dug out masses last year but hey presto they're still popping up. Dug them up a fortnight ago, they were very deep and the leaves had come through about a foot of soil to get to the surface.
I don't know the difference between English and Spanish ones, mine are blue and mauve and I'm expecting to still see them next year.
The biggest difference is that english bluebells are scented, spanish ones are not.
One positive for a new build garden. I just hope all the english ones I have bought are exactly as they say on the label
Hi, Spanish bluebells seem to be paler and bigger flowers, with bigger leaves too as far as I can see. If you have them next to each other you'll spot the smaller English ones.
The flowers on English Bluebells droop, are deep blue and scented plus leaves are quite narrow. Spanish blubell flowers are held horizontally, are pale blue or coloured with no scent and with strap like leaves. Unfortunately they do hybridise with each other so you do need to eliminate the hybrids as well.
I've been pulling the spanish ones I inherited every year and so far none have appeared this year, fingers crossed.
Am digging up hundreds of the inherited things, a good fork's depth. A pretty quite dark blue (some white), bigger leaves and more upward/horizontal facing bells, but I want English ones, being more delicate and scented. I may even wait until 2018 before getting them just to make sure I've got all the Spanish ones out as some may be tiny bulbs having seeded last year. Perhaps I'll just throw in some annuals to fill in for this year.