Although officially classified as minor bulbs, the spring-blooming miniatures you plant in fall are certain to have a major impact next spring. Their delicate beauty cannot be matched by the major bulbs such as large Dutch tulips and hyacinths. Many of the less familiar minors -- the nodding, checkered bells of a snake's-head lily (Fritillaria meleagris), for example -- will intrigue even the most jaded.

The greatest virtue of the minor bulbs, though, is their timing. They are precocious bloomers and include among their number the earliest spring flowers. Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), snow crocus (Crocus chrysanthus), and glory-of-the-snow (Chionodoxa luciliae), for example, commonly flower before the snow has melted, at a time when a gardener craves color the most.

Because their only common characteristic is size, the miniature bulbs are an eclectic group that includes compact cultivars of familiar garden flowers and a variety of wild or nearly wild flowers. In Martha's garden, for instance, there are throngs of miniature narcissi -- a group that includes both wild species and hybrids -- and white-and-pink-flowered dogtooth violets (Erythronium dens-canis), identical to those found carpeting an English woods, as well as grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum), whose blue-purple flower spikes are much like those covering the Anatolian grasslands each spring.