Arnold wrote, I have used Welsh Poppy ( meconopsis cambrica " Frances Perry") to >cover a large area of bulbs to include lycoris, tulips and some dwarf >narcissus. It doesn't seem to interfere with any early spring growth of >these bulbs and the spikes of lycoris flowers punch right through >without a problem. My question to the group is what to use with the >early summer growing foliage of colchicum's once the foliage dies back >leaving the bar ground that John references. Apparently Welsh poppy is not the pest on the Atlantic coast that it can be on the Pacific. It got into my garden hitch-hiking on a nursery plant as seeds, and I let it go, not knowing what the result would be. It's one of the worst weeds in the garden now, coming up everywhere -- even in the dry bulb frame! Here it's perennial and very hard to pull out completely, like a dandelion. It forms large clumps that can interfere with spring bulbs, in my opinion. On a spring bulb bed here, I have the following at the moment: Shirley poppies which reseed (maybe too tall, and not a ground cover); tomatoes, which like similar conditions; the flat-growing biennial Campanula incurva; clumps of Nepeta mussinii. I've just added some of the newly marketed "Princess" alstroemeria hybrids, to see if any of them can survive our winters (I tend to doubt it, but even at up to $20 a large pot, they're worth a trial). Alstroemerias, if hardy, can be rampant growers, but their spreading rhizomes coexist with other plants. Prostrate shrubs such as Arctostaphylos uva-ursi can also be grown with bulbs, or perhaps the most prostrate of the heathers, such as Calluna 'White Lawn'. Some of the prostrate conifers are loose-growing enough to work in this regard; I have a prostrate pine through which bulbs and peonies emerge. Jane McGary Northwestern Oregon, USA