So, what's there to talk about? Only that this is the perfect time to start getting ready for next year's bulb planting. For those in the northern hemisphere, your planting time is right now and hopefully you've followed the directions that I'll list below - or you've just bought up big through the bulb catalogues.

Preparation is always the key to good gardening and it's no different when considering your spring flower bulbs. When the cooler months have descended upon you, you don't have time to sit and plan. No, now is the time for planning. This is the best time to consider what bulbs you need, what you have already, where they are going to go and how the rest of your gardening activities over the warmer months will affect these choices.

I dug my daffodil bulbs up for the first time this spring after 3 years in the same spot. I fertilised them heavily after flowering and allowed them to die back naturally until their foliage was starting to literally fall away from the bulb. It was a liberating feeling to discover that they had not only done well to flower throughout the early part of the season but that most of the bulbs had multiplied ensuring future bountiful crops. I did the same with the tulips, ranunculi and freesias.

Once out of the ground, storing your bulbs is the most important task for next season's success. Their main requirements are for good airflow, free from moisture and shielded from light. So, putting them into a plastic bag and leaving them on an outside table is the obvious antithesis.

I also like to clean the bulbs up before I dry them out and pack away. Apart from being completely banal, and OCD, about this, I like to know that my bulbs have every opportunity to preserve well. Leaving soil residue on the bulbs may not affect them adversely - but I like to play it safe. Plus, they look nicer when they're cleaned.

Now that my flower bulbs are stored away and I'm confident they will be fine for next year, it's time to start planning next spring's garden. In the past, most of my bulbs have been scattered under a few silver birches - woodland-style. This has worked well but now my garden is changing and that area has been rezoned for other plantings. Therefore, I'm thinking that containers and pots may play a bigger part in next year's display.

My wife pines for one of those painted wheelbarrows to take centre stage in our front garden yet I'm not that convinced. They seem a little 'kitchy' to me and totally overdone. I'd love to find fresher ways to do this that will also go with our current rustic style. My plan is for some steel buckets, preferably rusty ones to be spread throughout the yard sporting mixtures of daffodils, tulips, muscari (grape hyacinth), ixias, ranunculi and possibly a few irises. It will mean more work than the previous woodland-style but it should pay off handsomely once they're flowering and in their full glory.

Obviously, I'm going to need more bulbs to make this happen so rather than wait for next year's bulb catalogues to clog my mailbox I'm offer to scavenge through garage sales, weekend markets and the like, hoping to score some surplus stock from other gardeners. This is the time to do it because they're all lifting them from the ground and preparing for next year now as well. I should be able to make some great savings without paying premium prices in autumn and as they will come from local gardeners they will have some guarantee that they already grow well in my climate.

So, the synopsis of this is;

• Start preparing for your flower bulbs display long before they need to go in the ground


• Manage your existing bulbs well so that you don't have to keep buying fresh stock each year


• Plan for how the rest of the garden will accommodate your spring display, and


• Source your flower bulbs before the start of the planting season and save yourself some money

Planting flower bulbs is one of the great joys of gardening. They're like annuals that can be taken out of view once their display has finished (easier if they're grown in pots) but have the qualities to last like perennials. Enjoy your bulbs.