As a child, I was given a toy garden with plastic flowers you could push into holes in a board. Not the most sustainable of gifts, it fell well short of real gardening, but I’ve never forgotten its tiny hyacinths.
Back then, everyone I knew planted hyacinth bulbs in bowls of ‘fibre’ to place in a cool dark spot and force into flower for indoor midwinter color and scent, making them one of the best bulbs for Christmas flowering. Also popular were specially designed hyacinth vases, with a space for the bulb to sit at the top, so you could watch the roots grow down into water.
