It’s not happened yet, but I can feel that the bulb lust will soon be upon me. I work my tiny garden intensively and only manage to get four season colour into the border by packing in bulbs among herbaceous perennials. It’s probably inconceivable for me to stuff any more tulips into the hall border near my office window, but for May through August interest, I’m planning for more alliums, more lilies and possibly my first camassias next year. I saw @lialeendertz ’s piece in the Guardian about alliums and it underscores the most useful thing you’ll ever want to know about ornamental onions: if you don’t hide their tattered leaves with something, you’ll be sorry. I’ve just tucked mine in among astrantia, nepeta and delphiniums and I’m hoping for the best.

So yes, I’m renewing my commitment to summer flowering bulbs to squeeze maximum colour from my small space, but it’s the late winter and early spring flowering snowdrops, crocus, chionodoxa, narcissus and most of all tulips that cast the real spell over me — and my budget — every autumn.

Do you remember how the Catholic church got into a good bit of trouble some centuries ago for selling indulgences, advance absolution for future sins? Hell was big back then, and folks terrified of dying with unconfessed sins on their conscience paid big sums for indulgences, hoping to guarantee life after death by ensuring they’d die “clean”…or so the reasoning went. Spring flowering bulbs are a bit like indulgences: against reason, gardeners faced with the dying of the light invest too much every autumn, trying to guarantee life for their borders on the far side of winter’s chasm. For me, planting spring bulbs — especially those chestnut brown tulips, fat and perfect — is like casting a rope to the other side of January, where my friendly bulb vendor secures it and talks me across with comforting words about “brave crocus” and tulips “like a Dutch still life”. I can resist the crocus (they may be brave, but they get battered by day two), but the tulips will always have a hold on me.

Actually, my bulb vendor is very friendly; Anne and Jack Barnard at Rose Cottage Plants have never sent me tulips that failed to dazzle or, God forbid, were wrongly labeled, an experience I’ve had many times with other mail-order companies. The blackcurrant tinted late purple parrot “Muriel” they recommended last year was indeed stunning, and this year they’ve sourced “Happy Generation” for me, one of the many I saw in my Keukenhof tour this past April, but not usually available from Rose Cottage Plants, as Anne says her customers often avoid bi-coloured tulips. I’ve ordered 30; who knows where I’ll put them, but maybe in pots at the gate.

If you’re trying to decide what tulips are worth buying, definitely ask your vendor, or see these two video tours of the Keukenhof tulip tents I made earlier this year. My voiceover rambles a bit, but you will get a sense of how many beautiful tulip varieties look, rather than relying on the hyperbolic catalog descriptions. You can also see still shots of the tulips and other parts of Keukenhof in my Flickr set.

I have scattered galanthus nivalis, a February flowering double snowdrop, among my hall border and would love to plant a short, black centred perennial like Rudbeckia, whose black eyes might hold on through the snowy months to give me a black-and-white effect in late winter. Any ideas? Rudbeckia “Goldsturm” looks good but seems a bit too tall.

Do you have a bulb addiction? Which tulips mean the most to you, and can you get away without lifting them annually?

What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing — and that’s what’s strange. My Eatin’ Project has for the last few weeks been giving me perfect cos lettuce, proving once and for all that lettuce is a foolproof, quick win for first-time vegetable growers like me. Claire at Plant Passion had commented earlier this year that she is telling everyone to go for lettuce if they have a small space and/or they’re new to vegetable growing, and how right she was. The first time I cut one of these lettuces, I just stared at it there in my hands. I couldn’t believe I had done this — those perfect whorls of green were, well, perfect.

The sun was too strong just now to get a decent picture of the potato bags, but they are thriving, wedged between the edge of my tiny greenhouse and the side of this raised bed, which I’ve built up to double height of 12 inches. Crammed in there I have cos lettuce, some younger oak leaf lettuce, and wee rows of Parmex carrots interplanted with White Lisbon spring onions to hopefully throw off the canny carrot fly. There’s also a small pot of carrots nestled in the middle of it all. Strawberries are at the corners and a young Tamina tomato is it at one edge: hopefully I can support it against the tiny greenhouse if needed. Never outside of Tesco’s have so many vegetables been crammed in next to each other; it’s a bright, airy spot, so I’m hoping this density will be productive rather than encourage disease.

Interesting discovery: the potato bags do triple duty as potato incubators, a place to put unwanted old compost as I earth up the growing plants, and an unexpected place to germinate seeds. I’d dumped seed trays whose contents had never germinated onto the bags when earthing up: a few of those seeds liked the potato bag better than my propagator and came to life, giving me an extra five or six carrot plants which are now thriving. Go potato bags!

Let’s not pretend, however, that my heart isn’t still with the roses and the wisteria, which is looking stunningly fabulous at the minute. I’ve got a long-standing gripe against J Parkers who sent me the wrong wisteria, which means its racimes are crowded against the wall (W. Sinensis has perkier bunches than my W. Floribunda, and looks better wall-trained); my plant would really rather be doing its dangling thing from a pergola, but I hate to complain when getting a wisteria flower is so hard in the first place. Yet why is it that a huge portion of things I buy mail order aren’t the plant that was marked?

I tried not to go mad planting vegetable seeds, but I do need now to find a sheltered place for rather too many purple sprouting broccoli plants, which are overdue to put their feet into the ground. Move over, roses, here come the brassicas.

Been thinking about whether the Web is going to kill glossy gardening magazines? No? Phil and James and lots of other people have been. But from the looks of the latest Web efforts by the UK’s aspirational Gardens Illustrated magazine, the glossies won’t go down without a fight. A bit of digging this morning turned up the following interesting facts about GI’s shiny new web self:

1. Looks nice and it didn’t take long: According to Editor Juliet Roberts, the relaunched site took only four weeks to turn around; granted it has the BBC magazines online team behind it, but still, that’s reassuringly fast.
2. The magazine’s bloggers want your views: Although not enabled at launch last week, the site’s “Add a comment” feature went live today and, if you’ve seen this magazine in the past, you’ll know that this is a step change for a premium glossy where readers’ voices were previously confined to Letters. Roberts and Deputy Editor Sorrell Everton are already blogging about shows, design and other issues, and are looking for your reaction. Go forth and comment, ye bloggers.
3. Breaking down the garden walls: If you find Gardens Illustrated stand-offishly highbrow, the editorial team wants to change your mind. “It’s unfortunate that Gardens Illustrated has been seen as unapproachable — as editor I would like to change that,” Roberts said. “I believe we can still deliver the very best, top-notch content and take a more sharing approach with readers. I’ve been working hard to make the magazine more accessible and the new site is edging us further towards that.” On the cards are GI on Twitter, additional podcasts and more chances for readers to contribute content, including potentially users’ own garden images and a discussion forum.
4. Web exclusives are a feature: Roberts says the site isn’t just a repurposing of print material; Web exclusives will feature in Garden Visits, Plants and other areas. The publication seems to grasp that online readers don’t just want a re-hash of print content anyway.
5. The US market is in their sights: International gardeners already revelling in the atmospheric Britishness of UK exports like David Austin Roses will be interested to hear that Gardens Illustrated is aiming squarely at global markets, the US in particular. Traditional marketing to those geographies is prohibitively expensive and like other resource-strapped BBC titles, GI will do what it can to use online to reach out to new audiences.

With other parts of the BBC web presence facing as much as 25 percent cuts in staff and talk of reducing its web activity, guarding against a potential money pit is a key priority for GI, which is run by BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the Beeb. “A number of magazines were very gung-ho about their websites and these have become great big black holes that people are wheel-barrowing money down,” Roberts said. “We’re going slow and cutting our cloth accordingly.”

How do you think Gardens Illustrated should include readers more in its online activities? Go on, I know you’ve got ideas.

Two weeks is much more of a gap than I’d ever expected to leave between posts — sorry. January-February were a bit alarming in work terms, and I now know what the clock on my desk looks like when it strikes 11 PM and beyond. My gardening has been confined to stolen moments of web research, so it was a thrill last week to pause my work schedule to visit a garden centre for the Eatin’ Project. My mission: find liquid seaweed to fortify my thin-necked cos lettuce seedlings and another tier to raise my raised bed.

Am I the only one who struggles with garden maths? Turns out my Haxnicks foot-deep raised bed isn’t. It’s six inches deep. My topsoil calculations were hilariously wrong. No one is impressed with the gigantic sack of topsoil I’ve left idling in the neighbour’s driveway, but finally I have another raised bed tier. Gordon the gardener will now help me distribute topsoil mountain all about, and if the weather plays ball I may get a few of those cos in, probably under cloche, probably after warming the bed a bit. (Note, I never saw a reply from Haxnicks following my query to their website about tiering, despite the jolly auto reply that promised immediate gratification. @haxnicks, for shame!) My Parmex carrot seeds have also germinated; next stop, spring onion junction.

Have I talked enough about vegetables? Can I move on to something more beautiful? See the greenhouse to the left of the picture window? It’s going to be shifted to liberate its wonderfully sunny wall for trained fruit. After much soul and web searching, it won’t be a cordon, espalier or fan, but a duo of so-called minarette pears from Ken Muir: the varieties are the agreeable Concorde and the king of juicy, Williams’ bon Chretien. (Concorde is partially self fertile but don’t expect great things without a pollination partner.)
The minarettes can be planted as close together as two or three feet, trained straight up or (as I’m planning) on an angle. I came so-o-o-o close to quince “Vranja”, with its intoxicating tropical scent, but finding a dwarfing rootstock proved extremely difficult, and I didn’t fancy years of hard pruning to keep a more vigorous “A” rootstock specimen in this tiny space.

Wait, can you hear it? The grindstone is calling me back, and I need to put in a few more hours’ writing before I sleep.

But please, please do tell if you have experience with “Concorde”, “Williams’ bon Chretien” or any minarette fruit. Did it perform for you? And is the taste of Williams’, in particular, going to be worth my three years’ wait?

The last time I saw 14 inches of snow out my window, I was an undergraduate in university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So yes, seeing as I’ve just turned 40, it’s been a long time.

But hard winters were my normal throughout childhood, so why do I find the sudden Siberian conditions in Scotland so uncomfortable? These past weeks it almost felt good to exercise old knowledge — newspapers on the windshield overnight to avoid scraping the car in the morning, or rushing to clear snow off the steps before it turns to iron.

The problem is that this weather, to my mind, doesn’t belong in southern Scotland, it belongs in New England — or Antarctica — and I wonder if my garden can cope. Growing up, I witnessed the annual miracle of Boston crocus, rhododendrons and roses emerging from the deep-freeze. But on moving to Europe, I adapted to something kinder and gentler. If you garden in a climate that’s not the one you grew up with, you’ll know how rapidly you acclimatise. One mild winter in Ireland was enough for me: years ago, on my first trip home, I was startled to see what looked like total devastation as I came in to land at Boston in March – a brown, crumpled, dead landscape.

Today my adaptation to the British Isles climate is complete: I expect only frosts in winter, daffodil shoots at New Year and emerging snowdrops by Valentine’s Day. The backyard of my 1970s childhood — lofty pine trees, rough grass, crushing winters — is long gone, and seeing a flavour of it here is unsettling.

As I write, the magnificent snowman the kids made at Christmastime has become a smothered blob following another eight inches of snow. My sleeping garden is a bit the same: a creation I’ve taken much trouble over, now pinned beneath snow that is less blanket than shroud. Will it, will it come back to me? Logically, I know snow insulates — the apples I threw to the birds the other day remained unfrozen for hours where they landed in deep snow. And when I’m being rational, I know the snow shroud is probably protecting my shrubs and my hundreds of bulbs from the killing hand of our recent -11 Celsius temperatures.

And yet…will it come back to me? We had daffodil shoots at New Year’s, I know we did, but they were well buried. Here’s hoping that when spring surfaces, it’s as Scottish as it should be.