When the garden is bare and the days are at their shortest, a bowl of hyacinths perfuming a whole room feels like a small miracle. Forcing bulbs indoors is easy, and even a late start gives you flowers to cheer up the dark weeks.
The difference between the two
Paperwhites are the impatient ones: pot them up and they flower in four to six weeks with no cold treatment, filling the room with a heady, marmite sort of scent. Hyacinths need a longer cold, dark spell first, so prepared bulbs bought for forcing save weeks.
Potting them up
Use bulb fibre or compost in a bowl, and set the bulbs shoulder to shoulder with their noses just above the surface.
- Water lightly, never waterlogged, or the bulbs rot.
- Keep hyacinths somewhere cold and dark until the shoots are a few centimetres tall.
- Bring them into the light and warmth gradually once they are growing.
Stop them flopping
Both have a habit of growing tall and toppling over just as they look their best. Keeping them cool and bright slows the stems and keeps them sturdy, and a few thin twigs or a discreet ring support holds heavy hyacinth heads upright.
After flowering
Forced hyacinths rarely perform well a second year indoors, but do not bin them. Let the leaves die down, then plant them out in the garden, where they will flower happily in the borders for years to come.