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Nearly three months after moving in and we’re still surrounded by boxes. Somewhere, possibly in the cellar or maybe the shed, there is a brown paper bag of bulbs I lifted from the old garden. Traditionally, I plant them in December – partly because life is always too busy, but also because as well as being cool, London autumns are increasingly wet, so that this helps stave off rot.
There’s something enticing about a second-year tulip. Anyone after big, blousy show-stoppers will replace their bulbs every year, and come April I will dutifully like their Instagram posts. But with my garden currently a wasteland, it feels almost perverse to insert the opulence of brand-new botanical tulips – like putting a wedding hat on when you’re in your PJs. Should I find my bag of older bulbs, anything they offer up will be a little more muted, but, crucially, free.
I’m increasingly leaning towards wild, or species, tulips. Smaller, with petals that end in pinches rather than a fulsome bloom, these bulbs pack less obvious punch but offer long-term benefits, naturalising and self-seeding far better than their one-hit-wonder cousins and jostling politely with other spring growth for a more meadowy look.
Species tulips hail from the cool, rocky outcrops of mountain ranges of south-west Europe and central Asia, so they do particularly well with good drainage and are perfect for gravel gardens, rock gardens, free-draining soil, or – if, like me, you’re lumped, quite literally, with clay – in containers with a good deal of sand and grit mixed in.
My gateway drug into species tulips was Tulipa saxatilis, which greets the spring sunshine by splaying its petals, showcasing a yolky middle beneath candy-lilac petals. If it were a full-blown botanical tulip, it would undoubtedly be too much, but nestled among substrate or pot-covering gravel, it is jewel-like and joyful.
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In April, I fell for the species tulips that smothered the courtyard of designer Sarah Price’s garden. There she mixed T. saxatalis with pale yellow primroses, the leftover seedfluff of Pulsatilla and, magically, a deep red botanical tulip. It’s a combination I will undoubtedly be stealing.
If you’re into hot colours in the garden, species tulips will serve you well: T. humilis ‘Eastern Star’ is a real Barbie pink, while T. sylvestris is a duck-beak yellow. All very jolly come April. Greater subtlety can be found in T. turkestanica, which pairs soft white petals with grey-green leaves, or T. ‘Danique’, which gives belle epoque energy. Whichever you go for, make sure not to overwater and plant in the sunniest spot you can. But don’t fret if the leaves start emerging before Christmas – they’ll survive a frost.
