For the love of tulips

Head of Horticulture, Sally Petitt, writes:

In autumn, garden centres brim with an array of tulips,  their colourful packaging and alluring names such as ‘Queen of Night’,  ‘Carnaval de Nice’ and ‘Abu Hassan’ promising brighter days to come. While their names may hint at the exotic, tulips are easy to grow given fertile, well-drained, gritty soil in full sun.

Tulips are among the oldest cultivated plants, with over 3,000 tulip cultivars classified into 15 different groups based on their flower shape. Whether you prefer a brilliant orange, ‘lily-flowered’ form, such as ‘Ballerina’, a flamboyant, ‘parrot-flowered’ selection like ‘Flaming Parrot’, or a member of the ‘triumph’ group such as smouldering purple ‘Negrita’, there will be a tulip for you.

Here at the Botanic Garden we grow a number of cultivars, including ‘Angelique’ (a double late form) planted in drifts by our Brookside entrance. With its soft pink, double flowers, it often stops visitors in their tracks. It also combines well with an underplanting of forget-me-not.

Gardening wisdom suggests planting tulip bulbs at least three times the depth of the bulb, and as late in the season as November, sometimes even into December in light soils. Planting late in colder conditions helps reduce the risk of tulip fire, a fungal disease which can distort the leaves and flowers. For the best display, it’s recommended to plant cultivars annually. Existing bulbs should be lifted once they have flowered, and these can be stored somewhere dry, such as a shed, over summer and replanted in pots for a second season.

However, many cultivars and hybrids are short-lived and more about flower power than longevity, exhausting themselves after a year or two. If you’re looking for reliable, perennial tulips, consider growing species tulips instead.

Today’s vast selection of tulip cultivars derives from approximately 100 Tulipa species found in the wild.  Originating from Europe and Asia these species grow in rocky sites in full sun. Unlike the more familiar garden cultivars which are best treated as annuals, the species tend to be perennial in their habit and may continue flowering for many years without the need for replanting annually.

Some excellent species for gardens include: the yellow-flowering Tulipa sylvestris, are good for naturalising in long grass, while May-flowering T. sprengeri with its red blooms is a good choice for an informal border where it will seed and roam freely amongst perennial plants such as Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii (Mediterranean spurge). T. batalinii grows to only 20cm in height and produces star-shaped scarlet flowers in mid-spring, while T. saxatilis thrives in a hot spot and will spread by runners and produce pink-lilac flowers.

At the Botanic Garden, we grow approximately 70 species Tulipa, forming our National Collection of species tulips. Most are cultivated in pots of gritty compost, which allows us to cultivate and monitor them more easily. They are grown and cared for behind the scenes in our alpine yard, beneath a polythene canopy to protect them from excessive rain. When in peak bloom, they are displayed in our Mountains House for visitors to admire at close quarters from February to May. They are well worth a visit if you’re considering adding species tulips to your own garden!

The cultivation of tulips reached fever pitch in the 17^th century when ‘Tulipmania’ saw Dutch investors ruin markets in a frenzy over rare bulbs. Today the frenzy for tulips may not be as fervent, but the love of tulips remains strong. Whether you choose cultivars or species tulips, these beautiful blooms are still deserving of a place in any garden, be it a formal parterre, cottage garden or in simple pots on the balcony

• Keep on top of weeds now – if you don’t get on top of them now when they’re at the seedling stage you’ll be up against it all year.
• Plant tender, summer-flowering bulbs such as Gladiolus and Agapanthus.
• Edge your lawns with either an edging iron or edging shears – this will not only set your lawn and beds off nicely but will also help to prevent lawn weeds creeping into your borders.

• Good free draining soil.
• Plant them in a sunny position e.g. SouthWest or South position.
• Protect from strong windy locations.
• If grown in pots feed regularly (once every couple of weeks) when in growth.
• If grown in pots repot at least every two years.
• Start with easy to grow species first such as T. saxatilis, T. biflora, T. clusiana, T. tarda.

This piece was originally written for Cambridge Edition magazine.