Bluebells help!

[Aswad]

Hello, miraculously I have some bluebells that grow in my garden that come back year after year! I’m surprised as I do absolutely nothing and I have some questions please:

what are these green things that have sprouted since I brought some indoors and placed in water?

can I deadhead (new word I recently learnt) and bring them indoors to dry out with the view of using the seeds? Or do I have to naturally wait for them to dry out completely (only issue is they’re taking up previous space and I’m excited to plant other flowers!)

are there any other plants that are just as easy to grow and maintain?

thank you so much! I’ve tried Googling the answers for the first two but I can’t find anything!
thank you again

I think they are Spanish bluebells Not spanish but hybrid. Most of what people call Spanish are the hybrid between native and Spanish. Pure Spanish are rare in this country.

Pointers that these are hybrid - flowers all they way round the stem, stem stiff and erect rather than nodding, flowers a flared bell shape, not narrow with flicked up ends.

Other signs - anthers possibly blue rather than cream, leaves may be broaden , less likely to have a scent.

@Aswad if you do grow from seed, they take at least 3 years (longer for native) to build bulb up to flowering size

Pleeease get rid of your Spanish or hybrid bluebells!
They interbreed with the native English bluebells to produce more hybrids, which overrun the native ones.
This is actually worse than grey squirrels driving out the red squirrels, because at least they can't interbreed, and now steps are being taken to conserve the reds.
We could lose our lovely English bluebell altogether, if this carries on.

@Giggorata if you want to come round and dig all of mine out of my plasticine-like soil you’re very welcome. I tried a few years ago and now that patch of my garden looks like I never touched them.

If I had the time, money and energy, I would make this my mission, to travel round and get rid of these invaders.
But you're right, they are very hard to eradicate, which is why I would make this one of the few times I’d use Round up, or similar systemic weed killer.

I dig up hundreds every year, the previous owner had made an entire slope of them 😡 All put in the council recycling. We put down membrane and stones where we could, and that of course was effective. I also pull out the stalks and flowers to discourage seeding, but they always come back. They are very, very deep bulbs, and you need to get all the micro bulbs too.... sigh..... Looking at you bluebells, also time to dig you all out again, and you forget me nots, next week you will all be pulled up too!!

Muscari are cool

I want to say cyclamen, for over winter, I have some in a window box and they have flowered continuously despite neglect. Our neighbours have them in the ground in their ground garden and I don't think they're ever touched they just come back every year.

I think the most important thing is the type of soil you have. If you have bluebells it is probably reasonably moist eg clay. Once you know that, and whether it's acid of alkaline, you can adapt your plant choice list to suit, and are likely to be very successful.