Perennial Tulips
Posted in Gardening Tips on November 1st, 2012 by Sonia Uyterhoeven – 1 CommentSonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG’s Gardener for Public Education.
Tulipa ‘Spring Green’
As I mentioned the other week, I have been making the Garden rounds to talk to different colleagues about their favorite bulbs. We often like to use tulips here at the NYBG as part of large annual displays in springtime. We plant the bulbs in November, which then flower in May. By June, they have all been dug up and recycled in the compost pile.
The reason why tulips are not often part of permanent displays is that many varieties don’t come up consistently in subsequent years. They look glorious the first year, spotty the second year, and prove fairly anemic moving into the third and fourth years. Happily, this is not true with all tulips, and many make wonderful, long-lived additions in a garden provided they have good drainage.
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