Tulips are easy to grow, but they can be exasperating. You might get a spectacular show the first couple of years, but soon fewer and fewer flowers appear until the display is, well, pathetic. Some tulip flowers shatter at the slightest bout of wind, snow or rain. And what has always annoyed me the most is that after blooming, you have to wait for the foliage to die back so the nutrients can be absorbed back into the bulbs for good blooms the following year. I don’t know about you, but I don’t enjoy seeing dead foliage in my flowerbeds.
It took me a number of years to figure out that not all tulips are created equal. The tulips that many catalogs and garden centers tempt us with each fall are Triumph tulips. They come in just about every color you can imagine. They grow on strong stems that combat spring’s fickle weather, but they aren’t necessarily great perennial tulips. They tend to behave like the tulips I mentioned above…here today and gone tomorrow. Unless you like planting new bulbs every couple of years, you may want to think twice before planting Triumph tulips. They do, however, make fantastic forcing tulips.
I’ve had the best luck with the Darwin class of tulips. They are the tallest tulips available and, like the Triumphs, come in many brilliant colors. They also grow on sturdy stems although they are probably more susceptible to wind than the Triumph tulips. The best part about Darwins is that they return year after year. I have a clump that has bloomed every spring for me for almost ten years now. They bloom in the middle of the tulip season so their dying foliage is usually ready to be pulled out just as the summer perennials and annuals begin to bloom.
Last year I experimented with Double Early tulips. I was enchanted by the photos of the peony-like blooms in the bulb catalogs. They did not disappoint. Double Early tulips grow on short, sturdy stems and are extremely weather-tolerant. My flowers endured rain, two freak hailstorms, and several “Wind Advisory” days and they just kept on blooming. In May when the temperature jumped from a high of 44 one week to a high of 86 the next, I thought for sure the flowers would begin falling apart, but they didn’t.
‘Foxtrot’ was my favorite. It grows 10 to 12 inches tall:
Other classes of tulips that bloom early in the season and come back year after year include Kaufmanniana, Fosteriana (emperor) and Species Tulips. You won’t see as many of these for sale in garden centers in the fall because they’re crowded out by the flashy Triumph tulip bulbs, but they are readily available via mail order and online. My favorite companies are John Scheepers and Brent and Becky’s Bulbs. Both companies have a great selection and ship big, healthy bulbs.