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The Easiest Way To Choose Tulips

Updated: Feb 16, 2024

There’s an absolutely staggering choice of tulips on the market these days and they come in a wide variety of types. If you’re new to tulips you may find the different varieties and flowering times bewildering and not know where to start. Faced with so much choice it can be tricky to work out what you should buy and where you should plant them. Over the years I’ve worked out a successful formula which really helps me to choose and I hope it helps you too. Having said that, I still get wildly excited every time bulb-buying time arrives and remain guilty of splurging on ones which catch my eye and vowing to work out what to do with them after they have arrived. I begin by deciding on where the tulips are going to be planted. My options are as follows: in pots, in the borders close to the house, and in larger areas further away from the house. On this basis I choose particularly dramatic and detailed tulips for the pots that I’m going to walk past every day so that I can admire them close up. These would include parrot tulips with their frilly edges, and peony-type (also known as double lates) which have extravagant double flowers. If the pots are in a sheltered spot then I could buy tulips with longer stems which are liable to get wind-blown if planted in a border or a more exposed position. Conversely I could buy shorter-stemmed ones that are in proportion to the pots I’m using. For borders my preference is for lily-flowered (also know as fluted) and viridiflora types. These have lovely slender stems with beautiful flowers. I find these types bring a more elegant look, particularly when planted in large volumes. For those with sizeable gardens and more spaces to fill, you can’t go wrong with the triumph-type of tulip and I recommend large numbers in one block of colour for more impact. There is nothing more fabulous that seeing a large mass of tulips. Selecting tulips based on where to put them makes choosing individual types so much easier so I hope this technique helps you when it comes to deciding on your own.

More Tips:

  • Choose a colour and pick different varieties of tulip in this colour so you have different textures and forms but with unity of colour.

  • Buy more than you think you need. By the time tulips start flowering, we’re so ready for some colour in the garden that you really can’t have enough.

  • Buy extra for cutting. I very rarely cut tulips from my pots or borders because it would ruin the display. The trick is to buy extra and plant them specifically for cutting. You can plant them in pots and then simply cut them for when you need them.

  • Buy new tulips for pots every year despite the fact that some tulips are perennial and will come back the following year. This is because when planting in pots you need to be sure that they will flower brilliantly when you need them and you can’t guarantee this with older bulbs

  • Don’t throw old bulbs away - I plant my older bulbs that have already done one season in pots in the borders (towards the middle or the back) and if they come back the following year then you have a nice surprise, but if not, it’s not going to ruin your border display.

  • I always over-plant my bulbs in pots: wallflowers and forget-me-nots are ideal. Then I mulch the pots with chipped bark and add a label for the tulips (push it right down into the soil so you don’t have to stare at it for months).

Above: Tulip Amazing Parrot



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