Nearly four hundred years ago, a single tulip bulb changed hands for the price of a grand Amsterdam townhouse. In 1630s Holland, tulip mania gripped the merchant classes with such intensity that the story of its rise and fall went on to become an economics case study.
At its peak, speculators were trading futures contracts on bulbs that hadn’t even formed yet, with one trader earning up to 60,000 florins a month – at a time when a skilled craftsman earned 300 florins a year.
Then, in February 1637, it all collapsed overnight.
The culprit behind the most coveted varieties was, improbably, a virus. Tulip Breaking Virus weakened the plants but produced an extraordinary flaming and feathering on the petals – vivid streaks of colour that made each flower unique and unpredictable. The rarer the markings, the higher the price. The rarest of all, Semper Augustus, became so weakened it could no longer be propagated and eventually disappeared entirely.
Which makes it rather satisfying that today’s breeders have replicated those same flames and feathers without the virus. The parrot and fringed varieties you’ll find in any good bulb catalogue owe their theatrical good looks to a condition that once crashed an economy.
Today, you can have the same spectacle for a few pounds a bag.
What tulips bring to the spring garden
The real reason I keep coming back to tulips – and I do, every year, without fail – is the quality of colour they deliver at exactly the time our gardens need it most. Spring arrives tentatively. Daffodils are cheerful but limited. Muscari are charming but small. Tulips, by contrast, bring presence, with strong upright stems, bold heads and a colour range that runs from the palest blush to near-black, via every shade of red, orange, yellow, lilac and purple you can imagine.
Plant them in generous drifts and they shift the whole mood of a border. Pair them well – deep plum with soft apricot, or white with acid green – and you’ve created something beautiful for a very modest outlay.
They’re also excellent in containers. Pots of tulips can be tucked away while they’re establishing, then brought forward once they’re in bud. It’s one of the few ways to guarantee colour exactly where and when you want it.
Tulipa ‘Ballerina’ (red) and Tulipa ‘Passionale’
Tulipa ‘Purissima’
Getting the planting right
Timing matters. We put in our customer bulb orders in August/September and distribute them for planting in mid-late November, which is ideal in most parts of England. This is late enough that the ground has cooled, which reduces the risk of tulip fire, a fungal disease that can devastate a planting. Set bulbs at roughly three times their own depth, pointed end up, in free-draining soil or a good peat-free compost if you’re using containers. A sunny spot is non-negotiable – they sulk in shade.
In containers, you can plant more densely than you would in a border, which gives you that full, lush look when they flower. Use a pot with drainage holes – waterlogging will rot the bulbs before they’ve even had a chance to flower.
Once growing, tulips are refreshingly straightforward. Water only during prolonged dry spells when they’re in the ground. Pots need a little more attention, particularly during dry weather once the leaves appear. From March onwards, an optional weekly liquid feed with a potassium-rich fertiliser – tomato feed does the job perfectly – helps the bulbs build strength for next year.
Deadhead the flowers once they’ve gone over but leave the foliage alone until it yellows naturally. The leaves are doing important work restoring the bulb, and rushing that process is one of the most common reasons tulips disappoint in their second year.
Keep an eye out for slugs and aphids, and if you notice distorted or marked growth, remove those plants promptly – tulip fire spreads quickly in cool, damp conditions.
Tulipa ‘Spring Green’
Tulipa ‘Ballerina’ in tangerine
The lifting question
Whether to lift bulbs after flowering is something people debate at length. In containers, it’s usually worth either repotting fresh bulbs each autumn for a reliable display, or lifting, drying and storing the old ones to replant somewhere less prominent – a cutting patch works well.
In borders, we tend not to bother. Many varieties will naturalise well if drainage is good and the foliage is allowed to die back fully. The more flamboyant varieties – parrots, doubles, the tall Darwins – tend to perform best in their first year and benefit from being replaced.
Cut flowers for the house
If you grow tulips in any quantity, cut a few – they’re magnificent in a vase. Trim the stems at an angle, remove any leaves below the waterline and keep them somewhere cool. They’ll last longest away from heat and direct sun, and they continue to grow in the vase – giving arrangements a pleasingly informal, slightly wild quality as the flowers open over a few days.
Tulipa ‘Angelique’ not quite open
Tulipa ‘Passionale’ and Tulipa ‘China Pink’
My personal favourites
Picking a favourite tulip is an impossible ask, but I’ve narrowed it down to a handful I come back to year after year.
Tulipa ‘Orange Emperor’ divides opinion – orange isn’t for everyone – but planted alongside the bright new foliage of emerging perennials in spring, it’s genuinely cheering in a way that photographs rarely capture. Trust it.
For something more refined, Tulipa ‘Salmon Impression’ is tall, sturdy and pale pink with large flowers that look particularly good against dark-leaved plants or the soft lilac of violas nearby.
If you want drama in a vase as well as the border, the doubles are hard to beat. ‘Angelique’, ‘Copper Image’, ‘Black Hero’, ‘Sunlover’ and ‘Alison Bradley’ are all worth growing – their full, layered heads recall peonies and ranunculus, which arrive a little later in spring, so the doubles give you that same opulence earlier in the season.
For something entirely different, Tulip cretica ‘Hilde’ is a native of Cretan hillsides – small, tough and genuinely good at naturalising and spreading year on year. Only 20cm tall, with pale pink stripes on the reverse of the petals, it works beautifully as low-growing ground cover.
And finally, Tulipa ‘Spring Green’ – white petals with distinctive green stripes, unusually long in bloom at up to two weeks, and perfectly suited to a cool-toned planting scheme.
Worth every penny
After four centuries of drama, price crashes and viral catastrophe, the tulip has earned its place in the spring garden many times over. And it asks for remarkably little in return.
If spring colour is on your wishlist, we’d love to talk about what a full garden design could do for you – planting included.