The forget-me-not, Myosotis sylvatica, transforms into a carpet of vivid green leaves as spring progresses, capped with clouds of tiny, deep blue blooms. The long-lasting forget-me-nots add interest after the tulips have faded and create a lovely soft backdrop for tulips of all colors. Tulip “China Pink” is grown beside them here.
Box
The box, Buxus sempervirens, gives the planting plan a modern appearance by adding a contrasting shape and structure. These clipped box balls have been interplanted with bleeding heart, leathery-leaved Hosta sieboldiana, deep red tulip “Pretty Woman,” and pale pink aquilegia. The formality of the tulips and the neatly manicured box is emphasized by the luxuriant foliage of the softer plants and the delicate, nodding blossoms.
Red hebe
With lollipop stems topped with striking red blooms, these tulips pop up among a patch of low-growing red-leaved hebe. Hebe is a perfect match because it needs the same amount of sunlight and well-drained soil as tulips do. It also provides a shrubby backdrop that highlights the tulips’ color and form.
Bronze fennel
The bronze fennel, Foeniculum vulgare ‘Purpureum,’ has delicate, finely divided leaves that works well with a variety of hues. It here creates a nice contrast with the tulip “Queen of Night,” giving the arrangement a more relaxed feel. Florence fennel is as effective in decorative borders and has the extra benefit of luring insects and birds.
Honesty
Honesty, Lunaria annua, complements the sophisticated deep purple tulip “Queen of the Night” nicely. Honesty is a lovely biennial with white or purple flowers. It looks good in contrast to the strong, formal tulips when let to naturally grow in a border. The characteristic translucent seed heads of honesty, which are used in dried flower arrangements, are another reason why it is produced.
Bluebells
Our native bluebell, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, pairs beautifully with tulips thanks to its characteristic blue blossoms that bloom in profusion throughout April and May. It develops in the front as tulips, such as “Irene,” “West Point,” and “Ronaldo,” emerge from low-lying foliage in the background. For a meadow-like show, intersperse huge bluebell clumps with tulips.
Wallflowers
Tulips can bloom before trees go into leaf in places of dappled shadow. Tulip varieties like “West Point” and “White Triumphator” that are yellow and white can be used to highlight the edge of a woodland design. Combine them with a variety of foliage and spring flowers. To fill in the gaps, combine wallflower varieties like “Sunset Primrose” or “Sunset Apricot” with new, fresh ferns.
Tiarella
It’s worthwhile to experiment with various planting arrangements in pots. Pink tulips, pink bluebells, and tiarella are planted together in this arrangement in a nod to the plants that might naturally coexist at the border of a woodland glade. The display is softened and contrasted by the tiarella’s fluffy flowerheads and lobed leaves, which also cover up the tulips’ naked stems and sparse foliage.
Select plants that can survive in the same soil conditions as tulips: full light and good drainage. Also take into account when they bloom; ideally, aim for a progression of color or leaf interest
What flower pairs well with tulips?
Violets and pansies They make lovely accents for any color of tulip because they come in so many different hues. But if you have a problem with garden grazers, don’t plant these because they are attractive to nibblers.
Can other flowers be combined with tulips?
Tulips look fantastic planted in enormous drifts, but they appear even more beautiful when mixed with other flowering bulbs, annuals, or perennials. Here are some great pairing suggestions that you may easily use in your own yard.
Learn How to Care For Tulips in a Pot or Container For a Dazzling Spring Display
Colorful tulips in a planter can make a stunning spring display. To extend the blooming season, plant alone or alongside other spring flowering bulbs like daffodils.
How to Care For Tulips in a Pot Outside
Fall is the best time to put tulip bulbs in containers. Pick a planter that has drainage holes. Plant the tulip bulbs with their pointed ends up, filling the container halfway with soil or compost. Tulips can be planted close together, but make sure they aren’t touching because this will make them rot. Set in a protected location for the winter after filling up with dirt and thoroughly watering. Move the container to a sunny location once the tulips begin to grow in the spring.
How to Care For Tulips in a Container: Aftercare
Tulips cultivated in pots experience more stress than those grown in the ground would, which makes it unlikely that they will bloom again the following season. If you’re unsure of what to do with potted tulips after they bloom, it’s best to remove the blooming bulbs and replace them with fresh ones to plant in the fall.
How to Care For Tulips in a Container: The Lasagne Method
Layering bulbs in a pot, much like assembling a lasagna, can produce beautiful color combinations and lengthen the flowering season. Pick a deep pot with excellent drainage. The bulbs that will blossom the latest should be planted after adding a couple of inches of soil. Plant an earlier flowering variety after adding another layer of soil. Finish out the container by adding a layer of very early bulbs, like crocus, or add other springtime flowers, like wallflowers, pansies, or daisies.
The only challenge left now that you know how to take care of tulips in a pot is choosing which of the many different types to plant. Visit our tulip collection for more ideas, where you can also get more practical advice on how to grow flower bulbs.
Can you combine roses with tulips?
- Pick roses and tulips that don’t have any stem or leaf fading.
- In the vase, tulips will bloom and move in the direction of the light. That’s totally ok! Let them do anything they want; beauty lies in flaws!
- Make sure to cut tulip and stock stems at an angle and use clean water to ensure that they can absorb lots of water.
- Cut your stems again today, and change the vase’s water
- Regardless of the bloom, this always results in a longer vase life!
- You’ll need fewer stems if your vase has a smaller neck.
Naturally, this also makes a lovely, homemade Mother’s Day flower arrangement that she’s sure to adore!
Pink tulips symbolize your love, affection, admiration, and well wishes. However, they are not intended to be a romantic act of affection.
Because they bloom in March through April when the ground warms and the bulbs move toward the sun, tulips are a sign of spring. Tulips are grown in greenhouses all over the world in the winter, so you can find them in flower stores all year round.
Here’s to diving deeper and finding more time to appreciate life’s tiny pleasures. How are you now celebrating?
What complements tulips in a bouquet?
“When it comes to enjoying tulips, simplicity is essential. Tulips of the same hue should be grouped together, and your vase should be decorated with ribbon.” Owner and head designer at B Floral, Bronwen Smith
Fresh Greens
“Pair tulips with field greens like Solidago or a fresh snip of eucalyptus for both aroma and fullness,” suggests the author. “My favorite vase is a speckled blue enamel water pitcher.” BloomThat’s production director, Callie Bladow
Can other flowers be grown on top of bulbs?
Winter annuals like pansies (Viola x wittrockiana) and snapdragons (Antirrhinum majus) are some of the best flowers for flower beds to add color to an otherwise drab landscape throughout the winter months. Both of these plants can be put over the top of fading bulbs. In Mediterranean climes, snapdragons and pansies are both regarded as winter annuals. Even so, when cultivated as perennials, their hardiness varies. Snapdragons thrive in USDA hardiness zones 7 through 10, whereas pansies do best in zones 6 through 8.
Can you combine tulips with daffodils?
Tulips and daffodils are frequently the first springtime seasonal flowers to bloom. Tulips grow in USDA plant hardiness zones 3 through 9, whereas daffodils are suitable for USDA plant hardiness zones 3 through 11. While tulips are available in a wide variety of hues, most daffodils have bright yellow tubular blossoms. If you combine early-flowering daffodils with midseason or late-blooming tulips, you may extend the flowering period and create a vibrant spring display when you plant tulips and daffodils in the same bed. According to University of Vermont, another benefit of interplanting tulips and daffodils is that because daffodils are harmful to both animals and people, doing so may teach deer not to graze in your flower beds. Daffodil and tulip bulbs are good friends since they both thrive in full, uninterrupted sunlight and require similar maintenance.
Can you grow different flowers on top of tulip bulbs?
Is it possible to grow another flower on top of my dormant tulips? The front of my house’s garden has some unsightly gaps in it. Thanks,
Thanita from Ashburn, Virginia
Mike: The reasons we Americans (as opposed to those in Holland) have trouble getting our spring bulbs to bloom year after year are, according to what I overheard you mention last spring:
- We drastically over-earnest the green, nourishing portion of the bulb and
- If we grow annual flowers on top of our bulbs, they receive an excessive amount of watering and fertilizing.
Your recommendation was to dig up the bulbs once the greenery had withered back and layer them in a pot, according to kind, with alternating layers of peat and vermiculite to keep the layers apart. You suggested, I believe, that they should still be watered, just not more frequently than a typical rainfall schedule would allow. So I took action. However, when I went looking for confirmation on the Internet, the data I discovered suggested that it would just cause the bulbs to rot and serve as a buffet for neighborhood field mice and/or squirrels (and deer if they found the container). I gave the collection one “watering”; after that, they only received rain. How did I do?
Hockessin, Delaware’s Tina
A. Tina, you mainly got it correct. The irrigation section was the one you misheard the most. I HOPE I mentioned to only let the rain hit the container they are in and NOT to add ANY water.
However, let’s go back to the beginning. One of the best interview guests we’ve ever had on the program, British gardening writer Anna Pavord, gave us this piece of advise while she was on tour in 2000 in support of her stunning book “The Tulip,” which was published in 1999. I remarked during the interview that one of our most frequent inquiries was over the reliability of tulip returns. That’s because you Americans plant annual flowers on top of the bulbs and then water and Miracle-Grow the crap out of them, rotting the poor bulbs underground, she immediately said.
She explained that Spring bulbs have evolved to live in their native mountains of Russia, Turkey, and Afghanistan in a harsh and largely God-forsaken environment. The bulbs that have been hiding put up their shoots, flower, and absorb a lot of solar energy when heavy snow and freezing cold eventually give way to a rather comfortable Spring. After that, the above-ground growth fades away, and the bulbs hide once more, this time from a dry, sweltering summer.
Therefore, according to Pavord, their DNA does not understand the moisture and food of summer; instead, it understands scorching, dry, and desolate. They don’t respond well to beds that are watered and nourished throughout the summer to keep marigolds, begonias, or petunias alive for that reason.
She continued by saying that because she, too, had a small garden and didn’t want to leave her bulb beds vacant for the summer, she had to learn this lesson the hard way. She began lifting the bulbs, preserving them for the summer, and replanting them in the fall as soon as she realized what was happening. She assured me and my audience that it functioned admirably and had a good deal of room for mistake.
It worked the first time I attempted it that summer and every summer after. I never repeated it exactly the same manner. The first year, when the greens on the bulbs had faded, I pulled them out and moved them to the back of the garden, out of sight and away from the sprinkler. I hammered together a bottomless box out of scrap wood, filled it halfway with soil, then added a layer of one type of bulb, more soil, more bulbs, etc., until it was completely full. Only when it rained did it get irrigated. And I covered it with a tarp when we experienced protracted rainy spells. I removed them in the middle of October, planted them again around Halloween, and had fantastic results.
After a few years, the box completely rotted away, so I transferred to large pots that were initially just plain ugly and had never gotten any prettier. This also functions well. If I have it, I will occasionally add a considerable amount of peat, vermiculite, perlite, or a fine, light professional potting soil blend; if not, I will simply use my compost-enriched garden soil. I’ve never lost more than a few items to rot due to mice or squirrels invading, either (and they were probably already damaged by my tender digging-up style, which involves a lot of creative swearing). Although I adore the picture of Bambi digging through several inches of soil in search of hidden riches, I don’t believe that even deer are that stupid.
Here is how I intend to make my Spring bulbs bloom again:
- Remove the faded blooms and any developing seedpods when they have finished blooming.
- Feed the plants so they will grow new flowers for you the following year. There are numerous feeding instructions in our earlier Spring bulb Question of the Week.
- Wait until the greens have totally lost their green hue before touching them.
- Remove the bulbs. The ideal method is to slowly coax the bulb out of the ground after it goes tan or brown while gently pulling on the faded greens. Go digging if it breaks off, but exercise caution.
- The degreened bulbs should be kept outside in a container with excellent drainage, either in the sun or the shade, in soil, soilless mix, or a mixture of both. Do not water them, and if it is raining a lot, cover the container.
- In the autumn, replant. In the far north, that would be September; in the mid-Atlantic, October; and in warm climates, after Thanksgiving.