This tulip,Tulipa sprengeri, is the exception to the rule. It will grow and flower well in semi-shade unlike any other and when it does it brings the tulip season to an end. This year it is early in my Amsterdam garden, but often it will not be in flower until June. Its colour is strong …
The Amsterdam Tulip Museum is a welcome resource for anyone interested in tulips and who happens to be visiting the capital of the Netherlands. Now they have started to share their knowledge and information online at https://amsterdamtulipmuseumonline.com My earlier post gave some impression of the quality of the museum and its shop and to support their …
Now is the time to make a list of the spring flowering bulbs and especially the tulips you need to order for planting in the autumn. With the bulbs in flower in front of you – there is no better moment to make a plan; if you don’t, many of your inspired ideas will be forgotten when …
I have just released a new eBook on tulips. Without tulips many perennial meadow and naturalistic planting schemes would be very dull at the beginning of spring. I mix them into my borders, dropping them into any spaces I find between the perennials. In spring they flower amidst the emerging foliage and sometimes the flowers …
They are early this year, but Tulipa sprengeri are flowering in the garden and this marks the end of the tulip flowering season. There is no better time to plan your bulb order than now whilst the memories of the past season’s bulb displays are fresh in your mind. In my earlier post I showed how well …
Naturalistic planting and especially the prairie planting variant can look very flat and green in spring. Often these schemes are filled with perennials that flower in summer and look wonderful with ornamental grasses, but in spring they are green. Red is the complementary colour to green and tulips are one of the ways to introduce …
Plants in their season can bring spectacle to the garden when used boldly. I search for such players in my gardens and use them repeatedly, at numerous intervals throughout the planting – I call them the theme plants in my perennial meadows. In my recent posts I suggested mid-season daffodils as the leading theme plants for late …
The woodland tulip is the common name of one of the most widely distributed wild species, however, its true origins are far from clear and in the form we know it today, it is associated with human cultivation. It is commonly found in Western Europe in orchards and vineyards where it thrives on the disturbances …
I am not the only one to be complaining about the late start to the gardening spring in Western Europe this year. Our winter was very long and cold and the garden has seemed to be stuck, awaiting a cue to begin its thing. Well, finally, this week it happened, my garden leaped forward. Perennials …
Tulips are too familiar for their own good which results in them being used in ways in our gardens that fail to exploit their many qualities. One of the biggest misconceptions is that they are cheap and easy. Yes of course they are cheap if you buy a sack of yellow tulips at the garage …