For every garden
The multitude of options for this spring garden essential is overwhelming, but choose according to your garden style and taste and you can’t go wrong, says Hazel Sillver
ONE of the most enjoyable autumn jobs is tulip planting – nestling these flower bombs deep in the ground, knowing that they will explode into torches of bright colour in April and May. While most spring bulbs are already in place, it’s important not to plant tulips until October or November because the chill weather helps to prevent disease. Armed with a bulb planter, it’s a fun, easy gardening task – the only difficult part is choosing which ones to grow.
There are some 75 species of tulip and around 3,000 varieties! So it’s little wonder that, for many of us, selecting next year’s bulbs at a garden centre or online can feel overwhelming, and we tend to opt for what we know. If you want something a bit more adventurous, the easiest way to whittle down the options is to buy according to the style of your garden and your personality.
Romantics with cottage-style borders will love the generous blooms of doubleand peony-flowered tulips and the frilly excess of the parrot varieties. Good examples are ‘Uncle Tom’, a chocolatered double, and ‘Estella Rijnveld’, a red and white parrot that resembles the tulips in old Dutch paintings.
Formal and modern borders, on the other hand, might suit cleaner, more upright forms, such as the lily-flowered and single-cup tulips. Consider ‘White Triumphator’, an elegant, fresh-white lily, and the impressive glossy black single variety ‘Queen of Night’.
Colourful and exotic
For a more exotic effect, go for bold brights or tulips that look like they have been plucked from a jungle. ‘Attila Graffiti’ is a rich magenta torch while Tulipa acuminata looks alien and wonderful.
The standard advice is to grow tulips as annuals, planting 3-4in/8-10cm deep and removing after flowering. But supplier Sarah Raven advises planting 8in/20cm deep to encourage bulbs to flower for several years; deeper planting also means tall varieties won’t need staking and should protect against squirrels.
Growing in pots? ‘Lasagne’ planting – the bottom layer made up of large, lateflowering bulbs; the upper layer of smaller, earlier bulbs – gives a longer display. It’s a nice weekend job and, come April, your containers will be ablaze with the colourful chalices of flowering tulips.