Tulips are without doubt my favourite flowers. They appear in April and May when I am in dire need of colour, variety and loveliness after the winter. I am deeply impressed by the fact that one, single, curvaceous tulip bulb can produce a flower which may be upright, stately, elegant and refined, or floppy, frilly, frivolous and flamboyant, or small, delicate and natural-looking, or tall, strong and with what could pass for an artist’s hand-painted stripes and markings. Tulips are also ridiculously easy and rewarding to grow and require no gardening trickery or sleight of hand.
I buy my bulbs directly from two exceptional specialists in the UK: Bloms Bulbs and Peter Nyssen and the bulbs arrive in September in boxes full of neatly labelled brown paper bags, but we have to wait until November to plant the bulbs because that’s the best time. This is when we dig trenches about 10” across and 6” deep, and puts in hundreds of bulbs to create a mini-Holland (see photo for inspiration).
And what do I do after the bulbs have flowered? Well, I throw away the bulbs that have been in pots since are they are exhausted and will not flower properly again. I then take a risk with the tulip trenches and leave the bulbs in the ground for a second season. Sometimes the gamble pays off and we get a good repeat performance, and sometimes the show is pathetic. If you want really stunning blooms, it pays to plant fresh bulbs each November. However, there are some smaller ‘species’ tulips which can be left undisturbed for several years, and of these I plant tulipa sylvestris, tulipa tarda and tulipa bakeri ‘Lilac Wonder’.
