Strategies for successful holiday lighting and spring bulb planting

I am a big fan of having holiday lights on trees and shrubs at home and keeping the white lights on late into winter. It cheers me up to see the lights on dark winter evenings as I return home.

Warm fall days are great for installing Christmas lights. It is much easier to wrap branches with strings of lights on warm days in mid- to late October rather than waiting until a cold day in late November or early December.

Use LED lights to save on power and be able to use more strings on a circuit. Buy warm-white LED lights if you want to match the warmth of the commonly used white incandescent lights. Cool-white LED lights have a blue cast to them. Wrap branches of your trees with strings of lights to accent the tree’s form. Chicago Botanic Garden staff installs lights on large honey locust trees in July.

If you are planting bulbs for next spring, keep in mind that daffodils are among the hardiest, most adaptable and most pest-resistant bulbs for Chicago-area gardeners. They naturalize beautifully and are available in many sizes and bloom times. If you select the proper varieties, you should expect three to five weeks of constant bloom. Deer, squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits do not eat them. Ornamental onions also will not be eaten by animals. Tulips are a favorite bulb for deer and rabbits to eat. In my garden, squirrels and chipmunks leave winter aconite and snowdrops alone while eating all the crocus.

Proper placement is important for success with spring-flowering bulbs. They prefer moisture in early spring and fall and to be dry in the summer when they are dormant. They do not like wet sites or heavy clay soil. If your garden soil has a lot of clay, plant the bulbs higher than what is recommended. In general, plant bulbs at three times the diameter of the bulb. It is best to avoid working with the soil when it is very wet.

Crocuses are ideal bulbs for naturalizing, for rock gardens or for underplanting beneath tall trees. They may be scattered in lawns, but their grasslike foliage must remain intact for at least six weeks before being mowed at a short height for best long-term results. Crocuses, which are planted at a shallow depth, are easy targets for rabbits and squirrels and might require repellant products or light chicken wire screen placed directly over them at planting time. Blood meal sprinkled on the ground after planting may help repel squirrels and chipmunks.

• Tim Johnson is director of horticulture at Chicago Botanic Garden, chicagobotanic.org.