Notes on tulips

Lots of my reviews will have the same sort of structure because my brain is very linear and I genuinely think with headings and subheadings. Shortly after the season is over is always a good time to review because this is a good time to source seed or bulbs for the next year. The websites are just starting to open up with their tulips collections and close the dahlias. My favourite sources are here, but I’m also trying out Organic Bulbs this season.

The other thing that these reviews will feature is dreadful photography. There are styled, filtered, careful photographs of things looking at their best. Then there are the phone snaps which you will need for the dates, recording combinations, mistakes and events. This photo is one of the recording snaps, but without it, I would never have known that this is what was out on 2 March 2021.

Timing of flowering

What I was aiming for was a bunch for the house, maybe once a week.

There are a number of things that determine when a tulip flowers. The most obvious is the variety choice. There are earlies, and there are lates. Confusingly, there are also rather a lot of others whose names are less helpful. Generally (and location, conditions and planting time will affect them) they go in the following order, starting in early April and going through until late May. (I am writing this on 19 May and my Dom Pedro are still looking amazing). Brownie, one of my favourites, is an early double and I had my first ones out in the greenhouse on 2 March. Although they looked amazing alongside Request which flowered at the same time. Request is a Triumph tulip and probably should have waited a bit longer.

What I am saying is, this list is a general indication, not a calendar.

Emperor

Double early

Single Early

Darwin Hybrid

Greigii

Triumph

Viridiflora

Parrot

Lily Flowered

Double Late

Single Late

If you would love to get a succession over the spring, then it is worth getting a few bulbs from each of these categories, rather than all of them from one. There is always going to be an overlap as each merges seamlessly into the next, so picking ones that go together is important. If you just do not have the headspace or the methodical bent to engage in a spreadsheet of how to manage this, I go back to this article every single year. Arne Maynard created beautiful collections which are successional. This means that you won’t get a vase with all of these colours in because they don’t all flower at once, but they will make a container outside your kitchen window give you unexpected level of joy.  Peter Nyssen also appears to be a fan and you can get the collections with one click. Not an ad, just a suggestion.

As well as the bulb itself, the time that you put them in the ground makes a difference to when it reaches flowering point. General advice is to wait until the ground has had a frost before you put them in. I have been known to put my bulbs in in January because Christmas is always a bit chaotic, and the brown boxes just pile up in the boot room. There is ribbon and envelopes and deliveries of snips, and the bulbs sort of get a bit lost in them. They are none the worse for a late plant but if you push it too far right, then this is going to delay flowers a bit. There are ways of using this to your advantage. I bought Belle Epoques twice by accident last year. The first I put in a massive pot by the back door and they were in full flower by 1 May and looking glorious. With the wind and the rain and their exposed position, they were looking rather battered by the middle of May, but a second pot that I planted up later came into peak flower at exactly the same time.

Both these photos were taken on 15 May, minutes apart.

(Another reminder to take photos on your phone. You will think that you will remember when everything happened, you won’t. Your phone remembers everything tough.)

Indoor/outdoor

I hate digging, and digging trenches more than anything else. I know you should plant tulips deeper than you think, add grit etc, but I do find myself putting them in pots and containers more than I do putting them in the ground. Some of them I put in the greenhouse for long stems and early flowers. (They fit perfectly in recycling boxes, about forty to a box. You must remember to water them though, I am not sure I always get this quite right.) They are laid in rows down the lighter side of the greenhouse and when they come into flower, I tuck the box underneath the staging so they are shaded. The stems lengthen towards the light and I get these beautiful elegant, gently curving shapes.

This year it worked a bit too well though. Remember that we had a heatwave in April and then it rained all May? My under glass earlies came and went in the heat and my outdoor lates were nowhere to be seen. A fortnight may not feel like a long time, but I was a bit bereft to be without tulips in such a key part of the year.

Helmar saved the day. A triumph tulip, it appeared on 24 April and looked absolutely incredible through everything the weather threw at it until I finally pulled them on 22 May. I mean, it didn’t go with anything, clashed with all my usual colours, was totally off brand so I couldn’t post it on Instagram but my god, it didn’t half cheer me up.

Which leads me to… colours.

I recommended Pinterest for a way of checking out your colours before you buy and grow, but there is nothing like real life. I find lots of the pinks that might look good in the catalogue are just wrong for me in real life. Tulip Burgundy for example. Peter Nyssen describes this as ‘Deep purplish-violet.  Tulip Burgundy is a stunning sumptuous tulip, the fluted flowers are slightly reflexing bringing an architectural elegance to the garden.’

What’s not to like? I planted in a box with black parrots and café noir. They were first up and out, alongside brownie (they never overlapped with the café noir, that’s how fast everything went over under glass) and they were a rather fetching shape. And then they just went pink. A hard, sweet wrapper pink which I just can’t cope with. They did make it onto Instagram, but only for me to say that life was too short to keep tulips I didn’t love and I put the straight on the compost heap.

If you want to see some really beautiful tulip colour combinations, then I can highly recommend having a look at Sarah Statham’s feed right now. She does know her colours. And if you ask nicely, she may even tell you what varieties they are….

If you would like to read more about tulips and tulips growing, do have a read of Polly Nicholson’s interview. I am seriously considering only growing historical tulips this year, although only because Dom Pedro counts. I may even be persuaded to dig a trench.