4 tricks for getting the most out of your hyacinths

The sweet scent of hyacinth has made it a favourite flower of spring. With these tricks you can keep your hyacinths blooming beautifully for years.

Spikes clad with bellshaped blue, pink, white, yellow or purple flowers grow 25 centimetres  high, and bulbs typically bloom well for three or more years before weakening.

Under good conditions, hyacinths will keep coming back for decades, although the flowers will not be as close together as they are with first season Dutch-grown bulbs.

If your hyacinths are flowering on short stems, force them to grow longer ones.

• Before the hyacinths bloom, place the cardboard rolls from paper towels or toilet paper over the green spikes to force them to elongate toward the light.
• When they reach the height you want, remove the rolls. They will then bloom on long spikes.

While hyacinths herald spring's arrival in the garden, you can enjoy them indoors in winter by forcing bloom.

• Plant bulbs with their "shoulders" exposed in moist, well-drained potting mix and store at 4°C  for 12 to 15 weeks before the desired bloom time.
• To break their dormancy, move them to a cool 13°C to 18°C, bright but not sunny spot until sprouts appear.
• Then place them in direct sun and keep the soil moist.
• Once the buds show colour, put the plants in indirect light, which will help prolong flowering. The fragrant blooms will last about two weeks in a cool room.

Don't throw away forced hyacinths after they've flowered indoors.

• Keep them well lit and well watered and feed with liquid fertilizer.
• After the foliage has yellowed and died back, plant the bulbs outdoors to bloom the following season.
• You may have only a few flowers the first year, but the spikes will become more robust in the next two seasons.

• Place hyacinth bulbs in the vegetable compartment of your refrigerator, where they will keep for two weeks.
• Wrap them in paper towels so their pungent skins won't impart their odour to the food.
• Or plant them in pots of damp peat moss and enclose the planted pots in plastic bags before storing them in your refrigerator.