Spanish Bluebells- should I dig them up?

[MountAth0s]

I’ve got a clump of Spanish bluebells that look lovely every year but due to them being invasive wonder if I should get rid. Can I plant native bluebells in their place?

I'd certainly get rid of the Spanish bluebells - they cross pollinate with English bluebells and there are concerns about this in horticultural circles. But I'd never plant native bluebells either - they are also invasive and if left to their own devices, will take over. The leaves hang around long after the flowers have died and the bulbs form solid masses under the soil which other plants cannot grow through.

If you chose to plant the English variety anyway, it will be some years before you can be sure you have cleared the ground of all the Spanish ones.

I love my Spanish bluebells!

To be fair, I didn’t plant them, but they make my front garden look lovely.

I tried planting some English bulbs in a corner of the garden, but they don’t seem to have taken.

There’s actually recent evidence suggesting it isn’t as much of a problem for native bluebells as previously thought.

that said, they can be thugs in borders. I leave them be in more naturalised parts of my garden, but we moved into a garden where they had been left to run rampant through borders and had completely taken over. We systematically dug them up 2 years ago, but I am still fighting them back in some spots.

I've been digging out the Spanish bluebells for 10 years, ever since I moved in to my house.

A lot of them have gone but I still get clumps coming up every spring. They are a pain but as I'm also still battling bamboo, the bluebells are minor in comparison.

And they are quite pretty.

If they're not spreading and causing a problem I'd leave them be. I have them in my garden (I think possibly a hybrid eng/Spanish) and they're no bother. Unless you've got lots of other flowers of say anything you can offer pollinators right now is worth keeping

I've also read that cross-pollination with English ones is not now thought to be such a major concern (we've inherited Spanish ones and live within a mile of an ancient bluebell wood so it has always worried me). Ours have never spread but they get denser every year. I remove the stems as soon as they finish flowering (they lift out easily) and the foliage once it wilts, this allows other plants to grow in the same border. Every few years I do dig the border, they form a solid bed of bulbs but I don't think I'll ever be able to get rid of all of them. They are beautiful.

My garden is only 5m by 6m and last year I took out about 200, this year it’s been maybe 50-80 - so things have improved. They are thugs in my garden, so I’ll be ripping them up every year.

I wonder if this could be what we’re digging out in our front garden? Finally getting round to sorting it out but finding an insane amount of bulbs? It’s like they’ve been having a 2 year party underground while we dutifully ignored them!
weirdly we’re also finding little bulbs that are stacked on top of one another. Could this be the same thing? They’re a bit more oval than round. As if they’ve been squished together.

Well you can have a go!

They are probably English-Spanish hybrids and they go deep, very very deep. Or in places you can't get at them such as emerging from under your house.

I'm trying to get rid of mine as they are taking over some of the flower beds but it will likely be a lifelong effort.

They are thuggish in my small garden but I deadhead them and don’t dig them up until after they have flowered as the are so important for pollinators. That seems to keep them mostly under control.

@AnnaMagnani They go under the house???? 🥴

I've got loads of the little buggers left still, even after a stern digging out of the little trenches they're in and putting down weed barriers. They seem to be confining themselves to those trenches though (like a weird little moat in front of my house 😂) so for now I'm pretending that I'm leaving them there as a design choice.

I must have dug out hundreds of bulbs last year though. Stubborn things.

@maldivemoment - the stacked ‘bulbs’ sound like crocosmia corms. There was a feature on crocosmia on last night’s Gardeners World.

@GertrudeJekyllAndHyde off to Google!

I dig mine up to try and keep on top of them and stop them spreading further but I’m not bothered that I don’t succeed.

@GertrudeJekyllAndHyde i think you nailed it! That is exactly what they look like. They’re bloody everywhere!

Thank you

@maldivemoment My pleasure! Have you seen them in flower? All the varieties are pretty, but the bog standard orange crocosmia (montbretia) is a thug which spreads voraciously (see the current ‘rampant montbretia’ thread). Named varieties such as ‘Lucifer’ are a bit better behaved.

@GertrudeJekyllAndHyde between this & the bloody bluebells! They’re everywhere!

Well, according to the colour wheel, blue and orange are the perfect combination!

My house is from the middle ages, there are no foundations 😳but the bluebells are underneath

I've had bluebells come up every year in my garden and lived here for nearly 30 years now. I'm sure they are English ones and don't spread but just come back in the same places each year. I think they look lovely myself