A Little Spring Before the Garden Wakes

By late January, most British gardens are still in that long grey holding pattern. The hellebores are doing their quiet best, the snowdrops are just about showing, but the borders themselves have that empty, waiting look. This is the moment to cheat a little. A handful of hyacinth bulbs and a few cut branches of cherry can bring forward the best of April by a good six weeks, and they will do it on a kitchen windowsill or a cottage table with very little fuss. The trick is not to rush them and not to coddle them. Both bulbs and branches respond to the same two things: cool temperatures and patience.

Choosing Hyacinths for Glass Jars

Forcing hyacinths in water is the cleanest, prettiest way to grow them indoors, and it needs almost nothing in the way of equipment. You want prepared bulbs — these have been heat-treated so they will flower early indoors — and hyacinth glasses with a narrow neck that holds the bulb suspended above the water.

• Delft Blue for a soft periwinkle blue, Jan Bos for deep magenta-red, and Carnegie for pure white are all reliable and sweetly scented.
• Buy firm, unblemished bulbs in early autumn if you can, and keep them in a cool, dark, airy place until you start them.
• Fill the jar with water so it sits just below the base of the bulb, leaving a gap of about 5mm. If the bulb sits in water it will rot; the roots will find their way down to it perfectly well.
• A few small pieces of charcoal in the water help keep it sweet.

Set one bulb per jar. Three jars of the same variety, lined up on a tray, look far better than a random assortment.

The Waiting Game: Roots First, Flowers Later

This is where most people go wrong. The bulb needs cold and darkness to build roots before it is asked to grow leaves and flowers. Put your jars somewhere genuinely cool — around 9–10°C is ideal. A shed, a garage, an unheated porch or a cold spare room will all do, as will a dark cupboard in a chilly house.

Leave them there for eight to ten weeks. Check the water level every week or so and top up as needed, always keeping that gap below the bulb. You will know they are ready when the jar is full of white roots and the green shoot has reached about 5cm. At that point, bring them into a cool, bright room at roughly 15–18°C, well away from radiators and direct sun. Turn the jars every couple of days so the stems grow straight rather than leaning towards the light. Flowers follow in three to four weeks.

Cutting Cherry Blossom Branches

Any early-flowering cherry will force indoors, as will forsythia, flowering quince and hazel. Cut on a mild morning when the temperature is above freezing and the buds are swelling but still tight — branches cut too late will drop their blossom within days.

• Choose a day when the shrub is not frozen, and take branches with plenty of fat buds.
• Cut on a sharp slant and take longer stems than you think you need; you will trim them once arranged.
• At home, make two or three vertical slits about 2–3cm long through the bark at the base of each stem, or give the ends a light tap with a hammer. This helps them drink.
• Stand them in deep lukewarm water in a cool, dim room for 24 to 48 hours to condition before arranging.

Use tepid water rather than cold, and if your tap water is heavily chlorinated, let it stand overnight first.

Arranging Hyacinths and Blossom Together

The pairing works because the shapes are so different: the dense, upright column of a hyacinth against the loose, airy arch of blossom. Keep it simple. Put the jars together on a shallow wooden tray or a piece of slate, and set the blossom in a tall clear glass vase or a plain stoneware jug beside them.

Two or three stems of blossom is plenty for a small table. Give them a couple of inches of water, change it every few days, and mist the branches daily — dry indoor air is what makes blossom drop before its time. Keep the whole display away from radiators, sunny sills and the fruit bowl; ripening fruit releases ethylene, which will shorten the life of cut flowers noticeably.

Keeping the Display Going

Hyacinth flowers will hold for two to three weeks in a cool spot; blossom usually gives you one to two. Once the hyacinths are over, do not throw the bulbs away. Plant them out in a sheltered corner of the garden, leave the foliage to die back naturally, and they may reward you in a year or two. Meanwhile, refresh the vase with whatever comes next — a few daffodils, some pussy willow, or the first branches of apple. Spring indoors is really just a rolling sequence, and there is always something waiting in the hedgerow to take over.