{"id":141,"date":"2009-03-23T03:32:49","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T11:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=141"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:33:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:33:00","slug":"tulip-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/tulip-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"Tulip Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"

TULIP DILEMMA
\n<\/font><\/font><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Right now, as the first daffodils are opening in the warmer, more sheltered spots in my home town, I am awash in a high tide of gardening magazines.\u00a0 Their pages are overflowing with gorgeous photo spreads of spring gardens and all of those gardens are full of tulips.\u00a0 The bright flowers are formally arranged in artistic color combinations, strewn with wild abandon over sumptuous landscapes or massed in borders made up of thousands of individual bulbs.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Those glorious photos make me crazy because tulips can be a challenge.\u00a0 They are among the most beautiful flowers known to man–when they are not devoured by varmints before they bloom. \u00a0Many varieties flower beautifully the first year, but they never return.\u00a0 Others return, but flower size is much reduced, and eventually only leaves pop up from the ground in the spring.\u00a0 Problems with varmints can be surmounted and repeat blooming is not an issue for those wealthy gardeners and botanical institutions that have the resources to buy and install new bulbs every year.\u00a0 I have only ingenuity, which is sometimes in short supply.\u00a0 It is the tulip lover’s dilemma.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not long ago I read an article on Great Dixter, the celebrated English garden of the late Christopher Lloyd.\u00a0 Lloyd was renowned for being generous, prickly and opinionated in equal measures.\u00a0 He was also a fabulous gardener, an expert on all kinds of plants and a designer who was willing to think “outside the box”\u009d to create striking plant combinations.\u00a0 Lloyd died three years ago and articles since then have focused on how Great Dixter, which is now a public garden, has evolved.\u00a0 By all accounts it is evolving nicely under the direction of Lloyd’s friend and longtime head gardener, Fergus Garrett.\u00a0 The most recent article on Great Dixter focused on the spring flower display and mentioned how Garrett and his crew treat tulips.\u00a0 I was intrigued, because the ideas might help me and other overworked home gardeners figure out what to do with our own plants.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Like many of us, the gardeners at Great Dixter grow all kinds of tulips, including some that have a greater tendency to “perennialize”\u009d or return for years after planting, more than others.\u00a0 Good reblooming tulips include many of the popular species types, like the little purple and yellow Tulipa bakeri ‘Lilac Wonder’ and the early-blooming, mid-size clusiana tulips.\u00a0 The enormous Darwin hybrid tulips are also reputed to be good rebloomers, though my own results with them have been mixed.\u00a0 Popular Darwin hybrids include ‘Pink Impression’ and the pink and white ‘Ollioules’.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At Great Dixter, the good rebloomers are left to their own devices in mixed beds.\u00a0 Tulips that are not likely to rebloom are removed from beds after the foliage has died back and replaced with late spring and summer annuals.\u00a0 The bulbs are left in a cool, dry place until fall, when they are replanted.\u00a0 The advantages to this technique are obvious.\u00a0 It is economical, at least in monetary terms, because the gardener can get more than one season of bloom out of each bulb.\u00a0 Installing annuals is less of a problem because you don’t have to worry about digging up bulbs by accident.\u00a0 For at least part of the year, your tulips will be out of the reach of voracious varmints.\u00a0 Instead of spending money to replace bulbs every year, you can add to your collection.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The downside is, of course, the work involved in digging and storing the bulbs.\u00a0 If you have the space in a garage or basement and you have either a relatively small number of tulips or a few garden helpers, it is relatively easy to dig, store and replant.\u00a0 This may be an especially good option for container gardeners.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There is a compromise as well.\u00a0 For the tulips that return with smaller blossoms, simply keep them in the ground, but add new bulbs of the same variety every fall.\u00a0 That way, you will have a mix of blossom sizes within one color scheme and you can increase your stock of bulbs a little each year.\u00a0 When a particular bulb gets to the point that it is only sending up a leaf or two and no flower stalk, it can be removed.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, if you hate tulips, you are all set.\u00a0 Simply plant a lot of reliable, ever-increasing daffodils and avoid the whole bloom\/rebloom problem.\u00a0 Varmints hate daffodils, which is another plus.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Many of us though, love tulips for their exuberant colors and forms.\u00a0 And, as the old clich\u00c3\u00a9 goes, love will find a way–even if that way involves a lot of digging in the dirt.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TULIP DILEMMA \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Right now, as the first daffodils are opening in the warmer, more sheltered spots in my home town, I am awash in a high tide of gardening magazines.\u00a0 Their pages are overflowing with gorgeous photo spreads of spring gardens and all of those gardens are full of tulips.\u00a0 The bright flowers are … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1643,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/1643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}