Tulips can’t paint your garden with exquisite color from March through May, but many artificial tulip hues from hybridizing tend to clash with one another.
Therefore, before ordering bulbs, it is wise to study the varieties offered in color-illustrated catalogs and note pleasing color combinations in the tulip plantings you visit.
For color, coordination buys named varieties rather than odd lots of assorted colors, limiting you to having two or three types in bloom at once.
Instead, use different combinations in successive flowering sequences to gain color variation in your garden over the long tulip season.
To have straight flowering lines, you must utilize various types of tulips. These are discussed more fully a bit further on.
Using Tulip Varieties For Color Coordination
For color coordination, you might try the more subtle varieties in your large display beds and use the more potent varieties as color accents in informal drifts of 12 to 15 bulbs, either in marginal borders or in the centers of the large beds.
The secret is to let one color dominate and set it off with contrasting or harmonizing hues.
For example, an attractive combination can be formed with dominating masses of THE BISHOP, a delicate lilac, and GLACIER, a white, together with smaller accent drifts of QUEEN OF THE NIGHT, a velvet purple.
Because all three are Darwin types, they bloom simultaneously.
You will find that white is lovely for tying colors together and that the pastels appear washed out whenever pastels are included with brilliant fiery colors.
They are most effective when used in combination with dark hues.
Here are some of the significant types of tulips. Each has a fairly definite bloom period, and the dates mentioned are approximate for the North. Farther south, they bloom progressively earlier.
Tulip species are the first to flower, from which all others are believed to have evolved. Most of them are short-stemmed and informal inhabit.
Flowering in late March and early April, the earliest is Tulipa Kaufmanniana, the water-lily tulip, with flowers a soft pale-yellow inside and salmon-pink outside.
It has fine hybrids, including CESAR FRANCK, a glorious yellow and red.
The spectacular RED EMPEROR on a 15” inches stem, a variety of Tulipa Fosteriana, flowers in early April and was long known as the largest-flowered tulip.
That distinction now goes to the new HOLLAND GLORY, 30” inches stem, which crosses RED EMPEROR and a Darwin type.
It opens just after the RED EMPEROR in a blaze of orange-scarlet, maturing to a deep scarlet.
Brilliant Tulip Species
Other species generally flower between April 10 and 30.
Among the most brilliant of these are the following:
- Orange-scarlet multiple-flowered FUSILIER, a hybrid of Tulipa praestans
- Pointed-flowered candlestick tulip, Tulip Clusiana
- Tulip acuminate, with its twisted petals
Early singles, flowering from about April 10 to 30, have shorter stems (8” to 15” inches) and smaller flowers than the May-flowering sorts.
Still, their flowers are longer lasting and many varieties, such as PRINCE OF AUSTRIA and GENERAL DE WET, are very fragrant.
Early doubles, medium to tall, blossom with the early singles. Their colors are pink, rose, red, yellow, and white.
Triumph tulips are a midseason group flowering on 20” to 24” inches stems from about April 25 to May 5.
Their color is good and bridges the gap between the early singles and doubles and the late-flowering types.
Late- or May-flowering types are planted in abundance by tulip lovers everywhere.
Among them are the Darwins, which display flowers on 26” to 32” inches stems from about May 5 to 20 in a great range of transparent, brilliant colors.
Cottage tulips, also in the late-flowering category, display slender oval flowers on 28” inches stems in a fair degree of colors—yellows predominating.
Lily-flowered tulips belong to this group and are the most graceful of all tulip forms; their petals are pointed and recurving.
Old-fashioned breeder tulips (24” to 30” inches) are noted for their dull, dark hues.
Double late peony-flowered tulips on 20” to 24” inches stems blossom in late May. The color range is exquisite. EROS, a silvery-highlighted pink, is a great favorite.
The parrot tulips belong in this category and flower from May 10 to 25. Their petals are very curled and fringed, and the colors are striking.
Fragrant among them are SUNSHINE and ORANGE FAVORITE.
Tulip Planting And Care
For maximum flower size and especially for uniformity of flowering, a gardener should purchase and set out top-sized bulbs in his display beds each fall.
After flowering and the foliage has ripened (yellowed), the bulbs are dug up, stored over summer, and replanted the following fall in less conspicuous border areas and cutting gardens.
An alternative method, which completely avoids unsightliness in the display beds during the ripening process, is to lift the bulbs shortly after flowering and replant them immediately in a less conspicuous place until the foliage yellows and drys.
A third method is to leave the bulbs in place for several years.
October planting is ideal, but anytime from mid-September until the ground freezes are satisfactory.
At any rate, try to plant the bulbs as soon as received. The tops of the bulbs should be at least 4″ inches below the surface of the soil. Space the bulbs about 8″ inches apart.
Fertilization before planting has no noticeable effect on first-spring flowering, but it maintains vigorous growth and large flower size in the second and succeeding springs.
Without it, tulips become progressively smaller and poorer each year.
The post-flowering period is the most crucial in the life of a tulip.
For a while, the foliage is ripening, and buds for the next season’s flowers are forming in the bulb.
Remove faded flowers to prevent seeding, which takes strength from the bulb, and allow the foliage to ripen undisturbed.
Tulip bulbs generally reach their full development by about June 15. If you dig and store bulbs over the summer, wait until after this date.
If you leave bulbs in the ground year-round, do not cut back foliage before this date.
44659 by Oscar Keeling Moore