Quick QUESTIONS
Can you help identify my double tulips?
Carol Leach, by email You planted the bulbs last year but can’t remember where you obtained them. This is a truly striking variety. It’s a double Darwin hybrid called ‘Yellow Pomponette’; there are comparable double varieties in other colours, too. They can be obtained from several good bulb companies, including Dutch Grown (www.dutchgrown.co.uk) and Parkers, a British firm from which I buy bulbs every year (www.jparkers.co.uk).
How far can we cut back our big Clematis montana ‘Elizabeth’?
Emilia Harris, by email Clematis montana is an exception to almost all the rules about clematis pruning and is one of the kinds that doesn’t need more than a tidyup in spring but if it outgrows its space, it can be cut back hard without any ill effects.
How can I get my climbing roses to flower from the bottom?
P Draper, by email
Instead of cutting off the tops of the rose shoots, bend them down to the horizontal and tie them against the supports
to produce a ladder-like pattern covering the wall. Each shoot will flower along its length and the wall will then be clothed with flowers.
Are my strange multiheaded tulips rare?
Patricia Platt, via Facebook Your tulips have four heads on one main stem; something you have never seen before in 50 years of gardening. It’s unusual but not unheard of. Our garden tulips today are complex hybrids and there are natural wild species of tulip that normally have at least two flowers per stem so the necessary genes are somewhere in the ancestry.