Gardening with Kids: How to Plant Bulbs for Spring Joy

Living in Michigan means enduring long, colorless winters. The appearance of flowering bulbs—crocuses, tulips, daffodils, hyacinths—represents hope. Even in deep winter, knowing bulbs wait in cold, dark ground gives hope we’ll all make it through.

Planting bulbs in fall is easy and a wonderful project with children.

My tools: spade, flat-edged shovel, trowel, and a $5–6 bulb planter with squeezable plastic handle—worth every penny. (A friend uses a drill attachment, but the simple planter is entirely kid-friendly.)

Check bulb packaging for planting depth. The planter has a handy ruler. Place on ground, push down and rotate (clockwise then counterclockwise) to depth. If planter is shorter than needed, do extra turns—extra dirt piles on top. Lift planter; dirt comes up magically. Move aside, squeeze handle, soil falls out.

My 10-year-old daughter and 5-year-old niece planted with ease. Plant pointy side up. (We were having fun, despite serious faces!)

Full disclosure: bulbs planted too far apart. Kids dug holes so nicely, I didn’t correct them.

For optimum placement, arrange bulbs on ground before digging—easy to visualize and rearrange.

When all bulbs are in, push excavated soil over them and pat gently. If fall is excessively dry, light watering helps; normally not needed.

Key Reminders

1. Some are better than none. Start small—one variety—to save back, knees, and wallet while learning.
2. Keep it simple. Local nurseries offer hundreds of varieties; big-box stores sell mixed bags that work fine.
3. Leave the leaves! After flowering, don’t cut foliage. Bulbs need leaf-stored food for next year’s blooms. Cut only after leaves die. Camouflage dying leaves by planting with perennials like daylilies or ground covers.

Deer love tulips; they avoid daffodils. We planted daffodils—my daughter chose pale yellow-white, I preferred darker yellow. Spring revealed a weird demarcation line under our Japanese maple (likely bag mix-up). Spacing and count pleased me, though smaller groupings of each variety would look better.

Tip: Plant in clumps of uneven numbers—they look better.

Other side of front door: decent amount but spaced too far apart, looking spindly. Adding more this year.

Whatever you plant, watching for first green shoots is a deep early-spring pleasure.

More: 12 Classic Bulbs for Spring Blooms