Tulips are a lovely luxury ready for planting now
As the November nights really draw in, the garden can retreat from our thoughts. Recently, however, I interviewed a head gardener in Angus, who told me that he plants 3,000 tulips every November. It’s not that I’m at all idle in my plot in early winter, but this did leave me feeling a little inadequate.
Tulips can provide the most glorious spring colour over a long period, but there are a few tricks to know which help get the best from them. The first is that they are best planted late, in November and early December, to minimise the risk of the damaging fungal disease tulip fire. Also essential is the knowledge that most cultivars will only flower well in their first spring, and are therefore best treated as bedding plants, to be dug up and destroyed thereafter. This can make growing tulips an expensive hobby, but where the aim is to create impact in a prominent area or carefully placed containers, then it can be a luxury that is incredibly rewarding. The dwarf species tulips, such as Tulipa kaufmanniana and T. greigii, are among the few that will flower repeatedly given the sunny, sheltered and free-draining conditions which most tulips favour.
Beautiful as they are, I tend to avoid double and peony-flowered cultivars, the petal-heavy blooms of which are easily flattened by heavy rain or a stiff breeze. More robust are the singleflowered cultivars, such as ‘Queen of the Night’, ‘Jan Reus’ and ‘Apricot Beauty’, which come in the richest array of colours and can be selected to flower right through spring. The elegant fluted blooms of lily-flowered
There is still time to put in winter bedding this month too
tulips, like ‘Ballerina’ and ‘Sapporo’, are also irresistible.
There is still time to plant winter bedding this month too, and it is the ideal season to get new trees, shrubs, hedging and roses into the ground. It is important to anchor newly planted trees securely to stakes with a soft rubber tie while their roots establish. Check any existing tree ties now, loosening them where the trunk has grown, but ensuring they prevent the tree rocking in the wind. Now that deciduous trees and shrubs are dormant, hard pruning can be undertaken to renovate or reshape them, except cherry trees (Prunus), which should be pruned in summer to avoid silver leaf disease. There will also be ample fallen leaves to collect, and probably weeds to deal with after a fairly mild and wet autumn. Never mind putting the garden to bed for the winter – I’m more likely to be out there working with a head torch. n