Tulips when in bloom are always a beauty and a delight to behold. Even when the tulip shoots are just starting to unfurl in the middle of winter, we already look forward to the sunny days of early spring. Tulips like daffodils truly mean goodbye to winter and spring is here to stay.
Tulips are the most popular Spring flowers, and next to roses and chrysanthemums, tulips are the most widely grown flowering plant.
Many people would guess tulips originate from Holland, the world's # 1 supplier.
But our research reveals that the original wild or species tulips come from the remote valleys of the Tien Shan Mountains, where China and Tibet come up against the borders of Russia and Afghanistan. Others claim tulips originated from the mountains of Central Asia like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Still other sources place Asia Minor as the area of origin and spreading to Turkey and Siberia to China.
Whichever is the place of origin, it must be where the springs are cool, and the summers are hot and dry. It’s only under these conditions that tulips grow and grow, thrive, and reproduce.
From the original red, wild, single tulip -- wherever it first came -- Persia claims the first documented cultivation of tulips, in 1050 A.D. both in the walled gardens in the ancient capital city of Isfahan and in Baghdad, the Islamic capital of the time.
Europe, being truly the center of the world in the succeeding centuries, followed suit. First records suggest a certain Joseph Heinrich Herwart, near Augsburg in Bavaria planted tulips in 1559. His tulips became so popular that visitors from far places came just to see the novelty flowers firsthand. Then came northern Italy around 1560, Vienna by 1572, England by 1582, the Netherlands by 1594, and then France by 1598.
In England, the celebrated herbalist John Gerard wrote in 1597 of the existence of white, yellow, and lilac varieties aside from the original red.
Shortly after tulips were imported to Holland or the Netherlands from the Ottoman Empire or Turkey, tulips became the most sought-after commodity in the entire Netherlands. At the time, tulip bulbs were worth more than gold by weight and were sold for 10 times what a Dutch commoner made in a year. That was the period of tulip-mania, and that slowly spread to other places in Europe.
Now, more than 60% of the world's tulip bulbs come from Holland, although the U.S.A., Canada, and the U.K have vast fields devoted to growing tulips but mostly for local consumption.
The plantspeople and the commercial hybridizers now give us a tremendous amount of diversity within the tulip family. We now have singles, doubles, fringed, parrot, and peony-like flowers in solid or multi colors.
In fact, over 75 varieties of tulips have been created so far. We have a few varieties in our garden over the last two decades that we have been gardening although they don't exist or bloom in the same years. Since most of our tulips have been disturbed, covered over by other plants, or overwatered and rotted we have grown several varieties each year whatever are in vogue or on sale that year. Most of our remaining tulips are the common standards: Triumph and Darwin
Triumph tulips 'Passionale', 'Judith Leyster,' and 'Dreaming Maid.'
We have a few of the Parrot and the Fringed varieties which both have delicate frilly edges. Up close we notice the main giveaway feature of the Parrots: more twisted or curled petals. They're a bit more pricey, harder to find, and don't seem to naturalize or come back every spring. We can't seem to get the same varieties every year, so we have grown a few Parrot and Fringed varieties but limited number of each variety in various parts of our garden.
According to the guy at the local nursery, the Rembrandt variety is the most sought after because of its showy, tall flowers that are distinctly variegated or streaked with deep purple or reddish “flames.” Of course, we buy a bag of six bulbs for a hefty price. They bloom once but have never shown up in our garden again. I should call them Houdini tulips, with such unexpected disappearing act. Same goes for our tulip 'Vincent van Gogh.' We have somehow given up on these tulips named after great painters.
Fosteriana and Kaufmanniana tulips are early bloomers. Kaufmanniana 'Ancilla' is lily-like and ground hugging, and older flowers open up like propellers. Fosteriana 'Border Legend' is at least a foot tall. So, even within varieties there's a wide range of colors and growth habits.
The Viridiflora (meaning: green flowers) have green blooms with streak or stripe in the center of each petal. Because we want green tulips, we search wide for this variety, only to be disappointed with its Houdini disappearing act.
Our favorites are the Peony-like varieties, due to their colors, ability to withstand rain falling on them and hence longer blooms, and something looking different from the usual single tulips.
The large showy blooms held up high by sturdy stalks above leaves looking like green bunny ears make tulips truly outstanding spring plants. The blooms, as shown in the pictures above, now come in assorted colors, from snow white and chartreuse to almost purply black in the "Queen of the Night." The shapes of the flowers also show diversity, some are shaped like cups and wine glasses, the doubles look like peonies, a few open like colorful propellers while others remain demurely closed like giant raindrops.
We extend the floral show of our tulips by planting early flowering tulips that open up as early as March, midseason variety flowering in April and early May, as well as the late flowering varieties that peak in May.
We grow tulips based on their colors. We also tend to go after the new and rare ones. My wife's favorite color is pastel pink, so most of our tulips are in shades of pink.
Darwin Hybrid tulip 'Olympic Flame'
We accommodate our daughter's preference for loud colors, so we have a spicing of orange, lemony yellow with red streaks, and hydrant red tulips by the roadside corner of our garden. They add to the wow factor of that section of the garden.
The blooms can also come in flamboyant fuchsia pink and various shades of that color. Although a true blue tulip is yet to be hybridized, semblance of the royal color is now starting to come into the market. No longer are the King Alfred yellows and the fire hydrant reds the dominant and common colors of tulips. And, of course, the gardening public is just ever too willing to snap up tulips of the new painterly colors. In our neighborhood, we see tulips in many, many colors and varieties, some hug the ground while others tower up to three feet.
In our garden, we treat tulips as annuals, a biennial at best. Not because they flower in one or two years only. It's more because we accidentally dig them up as we continuously plant new perennials in the tulips' site. Some tulip bulbs remain undisturbed, and they manage to bloom every spring.
More often, we dig in new bulbs in the very site where old bulbs have laid dormant and forgotten. The result is a mismatch of the color of the blooms, like blush pink next to a clashing orange group. Or a couple of red ones among the swath of blush pink and orange.
To make our tulips create a big visual impact, we plant them together in certain parts of our garden. We plant our tulips quite close together, as if they were eggs in a carton, usually in groups of five or ten. We dig out a generous trench in the soil of about 6” deep with a spading fork to minimize hitting the roots of nearby perennials, fill it with a bit of sand and compost soil, and then water well. We don't need to water the tulips again unless they're blooming, and it hasn't rained for weeks.
Some gardening books even suggest simply throwing a handful of bulbs in the garden and planting them where they land to achieve a more natural look.
We, however, prefer our tulips planted together to conserve space in our small garden for other plants. We also love to see tulips bloom in bunches rather than spread out randomly. Massing creates impact.
Tulips hate soggy soil and the bulbs rot when water pools around them for too long. So we make sure we plant in fast draining soil or soil purposely raised above ground. We usually add sand or small pebbles to the holes we sink the bulbs in. This way we have better chance of our tulips coming back year after year.
Tulipanin, the chemical that gives colors to flowers and leaves of tulips can cause allergies and are toxic to horses, cats, and dogs. We don't worry much about those, since we're not touching a lot of sap from the tulip flowers and leaves. We keep our tulips in the ground, pots, or vases.
Tulip bulbs are expensive, so we can't afford to create a sea of tulip blooms like those in gardening magazines. If we yearn for fields of blooming tulips, we drive to the nearby cities of Abbotsford and Chilliwack, famous for their annual tulips festival. Or we head to Queen Elizabeth Park and the VanDusen Garden in Vancouver where tulips dance in the breeze like waves and waves of assorted colors.
We're content to see a mini pool of tulip flowers here and there in the sunny parts of our small front garden where the public can appreciate them as much as we do. Tulips are our guilty pleasure, and sharing our small pockets of tulip blooms with our neighbors who walk or drive by our corner lot makes us feel less sinfully extravagant beyond the capacity of our shallow pocket and frugal gardening budget.
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