I love planting up pots with tulips. Nothing brightens up my October or November more. I adore roaming around my wonderful local garden centres, mulling over the array of top tulips on offer and trying out a few new combinations. It’s certainly a welcome relief at a time of year when you feel that you are otherwise for the most part tidying up the garden and raking endless leaves – for me the gardening equivalent of housework!
I particularly love taking a punt on a few tulips I’ve never tried before. Waiting expectantly until March or April to see whether the colour, height and pot combinations are a hit or a miss. This colourful game of trial and error helps me expand my list of top tulips and edges me ever closer to achieving my ideal patio display.
So, what’s currently in my top 5 list of tulips or tulip combinations?
Top Tulips #1 – Diamonds and Dolls combination
The fragrant double flower of Blue Diamond, a purple tulip which is about 40cm tall, works brilliantly with shocking pink of Doll’s Minuet. Doll’s Minuet is a taller tulip at around 55 cm tall and has these twisting, flame shaped petals with green at their base. In a big, voluptuous display – mine’s in a massive square wicker basket – the tulip combination is stunning and makes a major statement even at a distance. My neighbour only yesterday admired them over the garden wall, and she was at least 200 feet away!
Top Tulips # 2 – Cream of the Peaches
I’m not a big peach-colour fan but Foxy Foxtrot is absolutely gorgeous and definitely in my list of top tulips. Around 30 cm in height , when it first starts to flower it disconcertingly looks yellow (so much so that I thought I’d been sold the wrong bulbs!) But the flowers quickly mature into the most exquisite combinations of hotter peach, coral with splashes of yellow. In flower from March and through April, it gives a much needed shot of joy to my patio early on. I planted mine in a slightly more curvaceous pot to emphasise the overt femininity of the flowers.
I thought I’d been sold the wrong bulbs when Foxy Foxtrot first began to flower But it quickly transformed into this sumptuous beauty
Top Tulips #3 Orca – but not a killer combination
Staying on this end of the colour spectrum, Tulip Orca has quickly become a favourite with me. Sumptuous hot orange ruffled petals, frothing throughout April and May . I tried to be clever and plant it with the purply almost black Recreado and while the colour contrast was striking, for me the Recreado is too tall and aloof for it. Ah well you have to try these things! They’re theoretically only 5 cm different in size, but I’m not convinced. So next year I’ll just plant Orca on its own.
Top Tulips #4 – Wow Factor
I think tulips Synaeda Amor which is a soft blue pink, and the handsome velvety Blue Wow look great together. As the flowers come through the combination looks almost bridal – especially in a gradually tapering large pale terracotta pot. Both flower heads have a sheen to them which adds to their classiness.
Top Tulips #5 – Buckets of Class
I have an ancient scruffy aluminium bucket which I typically plant up with pale pink tulips. The youthful pink of the flowers and the distressed metallic silver of the bucket work so well together. This year it has been home to my final shout out – the tulip Finola. Classic, feminine, it’s a lovely new double variety that produces pretty pink and white flowers, with a green streak rising up the outer petals. I tried it for the first time this year and really love it. I think it’s rather like another gorgeous, but more established favourite – Angelique.
Discovered a great new tulip or combination of your own? If so do share in the comments section and I’ll maybe try it out and review it next year.
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