Hi Michael and readers,
Following, as we all do, many English and European designers and gardeners on Instagram, I've been enjoying all of their recent spring photos of tulips emerging from within their garden borders. These images have made me ask how many tulips are actually necessary to have an impact in spring in a predominately summer-focused perennial border? I have a long perennial border with some all-year structure (miscanthus trans,, westringia, euphorbia, etc), but the border's star performance is aimed at mid/late-summer (agastache, echinops, penstemon, calamagrostis, sedum, echinacea), so I feel I need some spring bulbs to extend my seasons of interest, I'm curious as to whether I can achieve a good early/mid-spring effect with only sparse planting of tulips (combined with, say, purple alliums), which will provide some sort of show prior to the summer perennials take centre stage? Or do you need, as most websites advocate, hundreds and hundreds of tulips to have any meaningful impact in a border? Cassian Schmidt's recent posts state that he replants 800 tulips annually, which, for me, is not really an expense that I can justify. Having looked closely at the photo of Michael sitting in his beautiful garden on the home page of this website, it gives me hope that sparse planting of select tulips can still have a meaningful impact in a spring border. I'd appreciate hearing your experiences and insights.
Many thanks, Oliver (Hobart, Tasmania)
Tulips: How much is enough?
Discussion
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This is such a great question, Oliver. As you say, Cassian Schmidt says he adds about 800 tulips a year, but bear in mind that that is an additional 800 – adding to the thousands already in the ground.
Adding further to add to that side of the argument, I once planted 2000 daffodils in an old lawn tennis court, in the middle of whic we’d built a pond. So those 2000 daffs didn’t have to cover the whole area. The pond and mown grass around it probably covered about half the area. The rest was going to be daffodils in rough grass. Honestly, they hardly made any impact. We wished we’d planted 10,000.
But that was 30 years ago, and I’ve learned a bit about bulb placement since then. There are certainly ways to stretch them out.
Having said that, if I could only afford, say, 30 tulip bulbs, by far the best way to get the most out of them would be to put 15 in each of two pots. There’s something about pots that amplifies the impact of bulbs like this. It’s probably that it simply lifts them above the rough and tumble of the other garden plants, and ‘puts them on a pedestal’, so to speak.
Given your border situation, and wanting to plant them in the ground, there would definitely be an entry-level number beneath which it became questionably worthwhile planting them. But as long as you’re above that, the absolute trick is to plant them in patches of density, with a few sparse ones in between. Nigel Dunnett uses the metaphor of galaxies and satellites – making sure there’s concentrations in some places, and then outliers. The absolute worst thing would be to have them evenly, but sparsely, planted.
I chose the cover pic for this question to illustrate the effect of a small number of Tulipa clusiana in my Steppe garden. I have other pics that show other densities in the distance, and then a spangling of them here and there (but they weren’t as pretty as this pic, so I stuck with this..).
My feeling would be that along your border, depending on its length, you’d want at least three, maybe five, patches of relative density, and then spanglings of them elsewhere, to help those densities ‘join up’, or talk to one another. Please let us know how you go!
Hi Oliver,
I’m with you about buying new tulip bulbs each year and can’t afford mass planting. I potted up the 40 new tulip bulbs for this year and have grouped the pots together in a strategic spot on my deck. In previous years I have planted lots of tulips in the garden and would like to know if there is anything you can do to get them to flower again in subsequent years. I’m in Gippsland so we get frost and pretty cold winter nights. Cheers Andrea
Hey Andrea, the advice given to me a long time ago, and now backed up by many years of experience, is that tulips from the ‘single late’ group are the most tolerant of our warm springs, and most likely to re-flower. The other bit of advice I was given, but which I’ve never been able to verify conclusively, is that you should plant them deep. like at least 6 inches deep. That is further protection from spring warmth. Apparently it’s heat in the die-back period that causes otherwise flowering sized bulbs to split into smaller bulbs that may never again reach flowering size.
I noticed in a friend’s garden she’d popped in some garlic bulbs that flowered looking not dissimilar to much more expensive alliums… I wonder if you’d get some good (cheap) bang for your dollar with less expensive garlic?
I’ve been using pink flowering leeks in my borders. They’re easy to grow in large quantities from seed and the flowers are big round fuzzy balls.
For spring flowering bulbs, I find ranuculus and anemone very rewarding – easy care and long flowering. I plant more every year, but they’re cheap compared to tuilps and daffs.
I love those Tulips. You have planted a lot of them and they all look really amazing. I would like to see your pond. Can you share pictures of your pond with us? I also want to which pond filter you use for your pond. I want to buy a pond filter for my pond. I don’t know which pond filter would be good for my pond. I am sharing this https://www.backyardstyle.com/best-pond-filter/ website with you. Can you visit that website and tell me which pond filter would be good for my pond. It is my first time buying a pond filter. Thanks in advance.