Tulip porn
It is not too late to plant bulbs. Actually, tulips prefer to be planted late. The first week in November is ideal. Although daffodils, crocuses, scillas and other small bulbs should have been planted by now, you may still be exhausted after the rigours of the summer holiday and rigid with shock by the cost of new school shoes, so I will forgive you if you have been a slacker like me – there is still time.
I am astonished at how expensive bulbs are in the picture packs at the garden centre. A few years ago I am sure you could have got 10 bulbs of whatever for a couple of quid, and was appalled to see tulips of a fairly average size and variety at £3.99 for 5 bulbs. By all means buy the odd pack on a whim, if you have only a small pot to plant. However, even the teeniest garden could take hundreds of bulbs if you plan it right, and the catalogues and websites should examined with care.
A quick rummage round the internet reveals a wide range of prices for bulbs. Let’s take Tulip Angelique as an example, a beautiful clear pink late double tulip with an Award of Garden Merit. A wholesale company I use prices bulbs by the 100 or 1000, but rather confusingly says you must order a minimum of 25 bulbs at the 100 rate or 250 at the 1000 rate.
Once I got my head round that, it transpires that 25 T. Angelique will cost me £5.85. Delivery is free upon ordering more than fifty pounds worth of bulbs, which is awfully easy to do.
Retail sites are selling Angelique at anything between £6.25 and £8.50 for 10, so you can see why I am rather keen on buying wholesale. However, the premium sites will be offering top sized bulbs which will produce a correspondingly larger flower, but I have not found the wholesale ones poor at all.
Mindful of the final cost, I am browsing 40 pages of tulips to order bulbs for me and my clients and it is very hard to choose. I do not bother with the early kaufmannii and greigii tulips as I am quite happy with late daffodils in early April, and the one tall variety I dislike is Icecream, with a surround of maroon petals vomiting up a blob of cream in the centre. Like split corona daffodils, there is just too much going on there. Illogically, I adore the parrot tulips enormous madly curled petals, and enjoy their goings on tremendously.
Last year I grew deep purple Havran with mixed wallflowers. Angelique with white and mauve violas would be lovely. This year I may grow Black Hero or Negrita tulips among pale yellow wallflowers in my courtyard pots, or should I grow the red Couleur Cardinal with blue forget me nots? A cool scheme of White Triumphator in front of lime green euphorbia, rising out of a froth of white forget me nots? Many companies offer colour combinations and companion planting suggestions and there is one for every colour scheme and taste. I could grow a new spring bulb and bedding combination for the next 200 years.
I like a little order in my life, and do not want to plant a scheme with 10 of every different kind of bulb, and mixing the wallflowers with every kind of pansy – too messy and confusing for me. It will mark you out socially as well. Single colours and tall unimproved forms are beloved of the upper class gardener, who will boast that they get their gardener grow Bloody Warrior tall red wallflowers as you simply can’t buy them anymore, and they loathe the ubiquitous mixed dwarf Persian Carpet wallflowers.
However, a large bi-coloured scheme of one colour of tulip and one colour of wallflower or pansy reminds me of council bedding. I have adopted a protocol of either mixed colours of bulbs with a single colour of bedding, or a single variety of bulbs with mixed bedding which works for me, lively without being too messy. This probably marks me as hopelessly middle class….
