The dahlia, which grows from a tuber, is a beautiful late-summer flower that blooms until first frost. Blooms can range from button to dinner-plate size in virtually every color except solid blue. As all fall flower bulbs, they are easy to plant and easy to care for, requiring only that you lift them in fall for winter storage.

Colchicums are perhaps best known but least planted fall flower bulbs. They are unique in that they only need sunlight to grow and will bloom sitting on your potting bench or even on your kitchen table! Large flowers, resembling crocus, are typically pink. Although they need soil to make roots and foliage, because bulb must be planted partly exposed, colchicums are a target for snails and slugs, which will peel bulbs like an onion.

The saffron crocus is a fall flower bulb that does double duty in your flower garden. Lilac flowers display burnt orange-red stigmas that are source of spice, saffron. The flowers only last for two days. Pick stigmas on second day, air dry them and you have just harvested flower and fruit gardening guides homegrown saffron to season your dishes.