The tulips are looking great. If I were an oligarch I wouldn't bother buying a premier league football club, but I should like one of those gardens where every year 10,000 tulip bulbs were planted. As it is I have a dozen pots of them. I love tulips in all their manifestations, as bunches of flowers for the house, and Blom's magnificent display at Chelsea (the stress each year. Will this be the first time in about 65 years that they don't get awarded a Gold Medal?), but tulips outdoors have an extra beauty because the sun can shine through their petals. You can see where the petals overlap at the base of each flower by the arc of darker colour, sharply demarcated from the luminous area of single thickness of petal above. Viewed close up the petals glisten and have a striated surface texture like polished steel.
I went for bright colours again this year. The soft pinks and whites are pretty, but the hot reds and oranges are more exciting. First to open was 'Red Impression', a classic goblet shaped tulip in bright red, with a black blotch at the base of each petal. These are still looking good, but starting to lean and weave in different directions. It is a Darwin hybrid. I tried to pick varieties that would open over a period, to give me a longer season, and it should in theory have been behind the Triumph tulips, as the Triumphs are supposed to open mid to late April and the Darwins late April to mid May, but never mind. Triumph tulips are also the traditional tulip shape, and I went for 'Orange Sun', 'Abu Hassan', 'Jan Reus' and 'Negrita'. 'Orange Sun' is very much at the red end of the orange spectrum, with a silvery reverse to the petals, and the effect is warm and soft and not at all glaring. 'Abu Hassan' is a deep brownish-purple, with yellow edges and bases to the petals. 'Jan Reus' is a lovely deep burgundy, and again the backs of the petals have a hint of silver. 'Negrita' is a rich mid-purple.
Last to open are the Lily Flowered tulips, with their elegant pointed petals. The first flower has just opened in one pot of 'Ballerina', which is a warm apricot, lifted by the yellow stamens and basal blotch. The other Lily Flowered variety is 'Red Shine', and that hasn't opened at all yet.
I got them all from Peter Nyssen, a whosesaler which has also sold to members of the public for many years. Christopher Lloyd repeatedly recommended the firm in his books, which is where I picked up the name. The minimum quantity you can buy of one tulip variety is 25 bulbs, which does two 33cm pots nicely. The cheapest ones were £16 per hundred bulbs last season, which equates to £4 per 25 and £2 per pot. Buying tulips in packets from garden centres, or from the wonderful Bloms, it is easy to pay 45-50p per bulb, which comes to over £5 per pot. In the old City days it was a great game to go around the Bloms stand with an order form, ticking the boxes against the names of the ones I liked, and then forgetting about it until autumn when a large box of tulip bulbs arrived, together with the bill. Nowadays I make sure I choose Peter Nyssen's cheapest varieties, many of which are very good, just not the newest and trendiest. It's tough on Bloms, as I still look at their lovely Chelsea exhibit, and Peter Nyssen doesn't do one of those.
The tulips were potted last November in ordinary multi-purpose compost, and stood outside all through the winter weather. Unlike the potted hyacinths, they are absolutely fine. That is more than can be said for the pots. I used to use traditional clay pots, around the 33cm size, and got fed up with them blowing over, so a couple of years ago I bought some broader based, shorter ones from B&Q. They are 33cm at the top, but only 25cm across the base and 25cm tall. The proportions look very nice, in fact, and they give adequate rooting depth for tulips Unfortunately they were not sufficiently weather proof. None of them have cracked, but the rims are flaking off. I think I need to plan ahead, and buy a set of plain pots for bulbs from Whichford Pottery, if they have a winter sale as usual, except that that will be after the point when I should have planted the bulbs.
In the gravel, dwarf tulips are bringing the miniature bulbs season to its conclusion. These are reasonably persistent, at least in our free draining gravel. They are all so pretty, I tend to choose them as well on the basis of going for the species and varieties where I can afford to get 25 rather than 3.
Addendum I wrote that Geranium maculatum 'Chatto' had flowers in a dreamy shade of pale blue, which is how I remembered them. Then I found the label on the kitchen table, and it said that the flowers were pink, so I went outside and had a look at them. I'm not sure whether they should be called pink or blue. They are a pale lavender with veining, which in some lights is definitely pink, but in others a soft blue in the way that blue clematis almost always have some pink in them. It just goes to show that you should have the plant in front of you while writing about it. I couldn't be bothered to set up an extension cable so that I could sit in front of the tulips to blog about them (laptop battery life nowadays approx 3 minutes) but I did go out (with a clipboard) and take notes before sitting down to write.
Showing posts with label dwarf tulip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dwarf tulip. Show all posts
Sunday, 17 April 2011
Saturday, 2 April 2011
more April flowers
The buds on the wild gean are just opening. This is a big, multi-stem tree that sits at the point where the garden meets the wood. It was here when we moved in, and I'm pretty sure it was put there by the birds and not our predecessors, who were not keen gardeners. Prunus avium can be a weed tree in woodland gardens, and I recall being shown around such a one in Suffolk by an owner who regarded wild cherries with the lack of enthusiasm generally reserved for sycamore seedlings. But it is a fine thing in the right place. When in full bloom its beauty will indeed "shine out like a beacon of snow" for a few days. The pigeons have a go at the flowers but it is too large to be unduly troubled by them. Lucky we don't have bullfinches.
Little bulbs are still putting on a fine display. In the gravel, following on from the dwarf iris, there are brilliant blue Scilla siberica, and softer blue Chionodoxa and Puschkinia. Two-tone Muscari latifolium grows there, its flowers brighter blue at the top of the stem and dark blue on the lower half. The white flowered Muscari botryoides album also does well and spreads obligingly. I have a few plants of Anemone pavonina, bought at the Chatto gardens after admiring them in the gravel garden. These come in rich but soft shades of pink and cream, with flowers of a similar size to A. coronaria. They seem reasonably perennial, but my attempt to increase my stock by saving and sowing seed failed, as the seed went mouldy. Maybe they will do the job for me in situ.
In the long bed along the edge of the drive I have a lot of hyacinths. I have never bought a hyacinth on purpose to plant in the garden, but after using them in pots, even indoors, I always plant them out. They last for years. This is not unusual: Christopher Lloyd wrote of one clump in his garden that he knew was decades old, because the plants had originally been given to his brother when he had appendicitis. I like to ring the changes in pots from one year to the next, so we have dark and pale blue, yellow, white, and an exciting shade of purple from the variety 'Woodstock'. This looks especially good in the late afternoon, with low sun and the light quality that comes with the threat of heavy rain somewhere, when the purple almost appears to fluoresce (Verbena bonariensis will do the same thing in that kind of light). One of my tasks for this afternoon will be to replant a potful of Centaurea, originally planted last autumn, which I noticed had been pushed half out of the ground by a determined emerging hyacinth snout. Despite their exotic appearance, hyacinths are attractive to foraging bees. My hyacinth pots this year have almost failed though, for the first time in 25 years. They were stood outside, due to lack of space in the greenhouse, and only about three bulbs out of 20 have come through. The bulbs looked fine and healthy when planted, so I presume it was too cold for them.
In the back garden I have some of the dwarf tulips, I think 'Ancilla' and 'Heart's Delight'. They are cheerful little plants that persist well in the border, though sadly mine are blooming through a ground cover layer of sheeps' sorrel, as I haven't managed to get to that bed yet, as I work my way round the ravages of winter.
The only trouble with dwarf bulbs and an enthusiasm for self seeding is that hand weeding rather than hoeing is generally required. I like spending time with the plants, and am resigned to the fact that the garden tends to be rather weedy. Since I have no plans to open to the public I needn't worry unduly about other people's notions of how a garden should look. But if you like things to be tidy then extensive bulb plantings anywhere other than in pots or naturalised in long grass probably aren't for you.
Addendum The irrigation is running in the lettuce field, sending up sprays of water between the rows like a finer version of the fountain in the courtyard at Somerset House, and the fleece is shining in the sun as brightly as the sea. If I were a keen (or even competent) photographer I ought to keep a photo diary of the lettuce farm throughout the year. It could easily fill up a room or two at Tate Modern. Unfortunately I am not a good photographer, finding that walking around trying to capture things in a camera prevents me from looking at them. But somebody should do it.
Little bulbs are still putting on a fine display. In the gravel, following on from the dwarf iris, there are brilliant blue Scilla siberica, and softer blue Chionodoxa and Puschkinia. Two-tone Muscari latifolium grows there, its flowers brighter blue at the top of the stem and dark blue on the lower half. The white flowered Muscari botryoides album also does well and spreads obligingly. I have a few plants of Anemone pavonina, bought at the Chatto gardens after admiring them in the gravel garden. These come in rich but soft shades of pink and cream, with flowers of a similar size to A. coronaria. They seem reasonably perennial, but my attempt to increase my stock by saving and sowing seed failed, as the seed went mouldy. Maybe they will do the job for me in situ.
In the long bed along the edge of the drive I have a lot of hyacinths. I have never bought a hyacinth on purpose to plant in the garden, but after using them in pots, even indoors, I always plant them out. They last for years. This is not unusual: Christopher Lloyd wrote of one clump in his garden that he knew was decades old, because the plants had originally been given to his brother when he had appendicitis. I like to ring the changes in pots from one year to the next, so we have dark and pale blue, yellow, white, and an exciting shade of purple from the variety 'Woodstock'. This looks especially good in the late afternoon, with low sun and the light quality that comes with the threat of heavy rain somewhere, when the purple almost appears to fluoresce (Verbena bonariensis will do the same thing in that kind of light). One of my tasks for this afternoon will be to replant a potful of Centaurea, originally planted last autumn, which I noticed had been pushed half out of the ground by a determined emerging hyacinth snout. Despite their exotic appearance, hyacinths are attractive to foraging bees. My hyacinth pots this year have almost failed though, for the first time in 25 years. They were stood outside, due to lack of space in the greenhouse, and only about three bulbs out of 20 have come through. The bulbs looked fine and healthy when planted, so I presume it was too cold for them.
In the back garden I have some of the dwarf tulips, I think 'Ancilla' and 'Heart's Delight'. They are cheerful little plants that persist well in the border, though sadly mine are blooming through a ground cover layer of sheeps' sorrel, as I haven't managed to get to that bed yet, as I work my way round the ravages of winter.
The only trouble with dwarf bulbs and an enthusiasm for self seeding is that hand weeding rather than hoeing is generally required. I like spending time with the plants, and am resigned to the fact that the garden tends to be rather weedy. Since I have no plans to open to the public I needn't worry unduly about other people's notions of how a garden should look. But if you like things to be tidy then extensive bulb plantings anywhere other than in pots or naturalised in long grass probably aren't for you.
Addendum The irrigation is running in the lettuce field, sending up sprays of water between the rows like a finer version of the fountain in the courtyard at Somerset House, and the fleece is shining in the sun as brightly as the sea. If I were a keen (or even competent) photographer I ought to keep a photo diary of the lettuce farm throughout the year. It could easily fill up a room or two at Tate Modern. Unfortunately I am not a good photographer, finding that walking around trying to capture things in a camera prevents me from looking at them. But somebody should do it.
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