Spring and tulips are nearly synonymous. In-home gardens throughout the country, just as here at Kingwood Center in Mansfield, Ohio, where over 100,000 bulbs are planted each fall, many different kinds of tulips give an extended bloom season, as long as six weeks. For example, it is possible to start with the early-flowering kaufmanniana hybrids, … Read more
Now, and every year at this time, a wonderful gardening ritual is taking place. Gardeners, by the hundreds of thousands, are planting millions of tulip bulbs shaped like dark brown raindrops. Each gardener dreams about the color of what spring will bring out of these bulbs. Most gardeners know, too, that their dreams are justified, … Read more
The species tulips are the early birds of tulip-dom, gay and beautifully different. The tulip parade usually starts with Tulipa kaufmanniana, the waterlily tulip. This charming species grows about eight inches high and produces beautiful creamy-white flowers with centers lightly marked in red. From it has come a lovely race of tulips that will thrive … Read more
Earliest April coaxes out the white, yellow, and purple of tulip time’s advance color-bearer—the species tulip Tulipa biflora—with the whole glorious army of species tulips following close behind. For these native or wild tulips, come early and stay late—as we like all our favorite visitors to do. And these are very special favorites for many … Read more
The two main groups of tulips are early and the May or main-season kinds. The early group contains the species or botanical kinds, any of which are small in size and come into bloom soon after the snow leaves. Some interesting examples are: They are good in rock gardens and other places where you see … Read more
Most of us are familiar with the showy large-flowered tulips that decorate our gardens and public parks in the spring. Yet I wonder how many are acquainted with the delightful wild species from which these garden varieties were developed? These species of tulips, and their many varieties, flower from four to six weeks earlier than … Read more
Most home gardeners are familiar with the fascinating story of the tulip mania which took place in Holland before the middle of the seventeenth century. The development of the classification of the tulip and the metamorphosis that has come about in methods of planting and arrangement were influenced by popular demand and the historical happenings … Read more
Although contrasting tulips with perennials is an old gardening trick, a variation is seen in the above photograph, where tulips are surrounded by low-growing, spreading perennials. The white plant (above), which forms a sea around an island of tulips, is rock-cress (Arabis alpina flore pleno), but many others can be used as effectively. The tulip … Read more
In our time, only some of the older and larger firms of Holland worked at originating new tulips before the 1930s. After the thirties, perhaps to divert their thoughts from the daily misery and hatefulness of foreign occupation and war as much as anything else, scores of bulb growers interested themselves in creating and raising … Read more
Why be content with only two weeks of tulips when you can enjoy their wonderful flowers for two months? It is all a matter of selecting the right types and varieties; even if you are a greenhorn gardener, your catalogs can help you do this if you give them a chance. The trick is learning … Read more