I like working with "Colorblends" Wholesale Flowerbulbs. Their Tommies are $10/100; Scilla sibericas (not certain if their variety is the Spring Beauty or not) $15/100. Hope this helps. Savita Wilder (Zn8/9) West Coast -----Original Message----- From: ds429@frontier.com Sent: Friday, August 7, 2015 1:30 PM To: Rick Buell via pbs Subject: Re: [pbs] An English Bulb Meadow I have been longing to make better use of my lawn. I want to experiment with a drift of bulbs in the lawn. I have decided after reading these posts and after growing hardy bulbs for 50 years, that I want to plant, in the grass, Crocus tommasinianus, Puschkinia libanotica, Scilla siberica ‘Spring Beauty’, and some reliable Muscari selection. I have searched the websites of my usual favorite bulb sellers. Some of them have “upgraded” their websites so that they are much less navigable. Others charge unreasonable prices for common things like the old-fashioned “Tommies” which should be as cheap as the dirt they grow in. And others do not have puschkinia or even some of the really common species. Can anyone recommend a source for all of these genera/species in quantities of a hundred for a “reasonable” price? BTW: off topic, has anyone else noticed how badly designed some commercial websites are from the customer’s point of view? I assume the companies have paid a lot of money for a new and better website, usually one that makes things work better for the heads of the operations, more difficult for the employees, and often more difficult for customers to navigate. They must be losing business; they are certainly losing mine. Doesn‘t anyone give these things a test run? Dell, in WV, USA, zone 5/6? where it hasn’t rained enough since June, when it rained too much. From: Travis Owen Sent: Friday, August 7, 2015 2:48 PM To: Rick Buell via pbs My country yard (5 acre lot, semi-rural) is a rodent habitat. Moles, gophers, rabbits, tree squirrels, ground squirrels, mice... Bulbs are lucky to survive. Then there are the deer. Part of my yard has practically no topsoil, it is alluvial in nature (full of large rocks from an ancient river basin). Surrounding are douglas-fir and pine trees, adding a nice needle mulch every year. This is the area I've chosen to naturalize some Crocus and Scilla, small bulbs that I can plant easily in the difficult substrate. Moles and gophers stay away from these very rocky spots. Squirrels sometimes dig, but not too deep. To deal with deer, I've arranged some dead Arctostaphylos shrubs, the twisted wood is gorgeous, to obscure the view and restrict access by deer (inherently lazy browsers, I think). I have lost not a single Crocus so far in this spot, but I've lost many in areas with friable loam. Hopefully the bulbs will increase well. Photos next year. Travis Owen Rogue River, OR amateuranthecologist.blogspot.com http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/ _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/