Squill
Scilla siberica
About as little trouble as a bulb can be: sun or shade, no water, no feed, and it flowers before the border wakes.
- Type
- Flower · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Blue
- Sunlight
- Sun or shade — it makes no difference to this one.
- Watering
- Once established it needs no watering at all.
- Feeding
- No feeding called for.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- March
- Pruning
- Nothing to prune; let the leaves die down in their own time.
- Overwintering
- Fully hardy; leave it in the ground.
- Feb–Mar Spring Growth
- Mar–May Flowering
- May–May Growing
- May–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Feb Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 3.9 in
- In-row spacing
- 3.9 in
- Between rows
- 5.1 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- A bulb with fine roots beneath it
- Working depth
- 4–10 in
- Can reach
- 16 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 2–4 in across, about 0.5–1× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
Roots thread down from the base plate each season and are shed each season, and they go no further out than the leaves. Everything the bulb will store for next year is gathered in that narrow circle before the foliage yellows, which is why cutting the leaves early costs a flower.
The habit is Squill’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Snakes & lizards Colubridae & PhrynosomatidaeHunts Mice & voles
A garter snake works the beds for slugs and voles and a fence lizard clears grasshoppers off a sunny wall. Almost every snake a gardener meets is harmless and useful; give them a log pile, a warm flat stone and a bit of cover and they stay.
Green-leaved flowers, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com