Tulips in the Front Garden

As part of Gardening Gone Wild’s Front Garden Workshop I’ll show you the tulips that are in our front sidewalk garden bed, which is a work in progress. There are only two kinds of tulips in the front garden, a purple one called ‘Negrita’ and a mixed purple and white one called ‘Shirley’.

The tulips are blooming in a small rounded formation just in in front of two Euonymous Fortunei ‘Emerald Gaiety’ shrubs. I put in those two bushes and several yews as a foundation planting. The yews were in sad shape when I purchased them but I got them for less than two dollars each. I babied them a bit last summer and now they are flushing out with new growth. The euonymous are doing fantastic but that shouldn’t be a surprise!

If you look really carefully in the picture below you can see a Russian sage to the left of the euonymous. The Russian sage needs to be moved to the other side of the sidewalk where it will receive more sunlight.

Here’s a closeup of one of the ‘Negrita’ Tulips. It’s dark purple petals contrast nicely with the new green foliage of the euonymous.

The arc formation I tried to make with the different tulips had the dark purple of the ‘Negrita’s in the center and the white and purple colored tulips on the sides forming wings. In the background you can see one of my red twig dogwood cuttings. I tend to use the front garden bed to acclimate plants (usually from cuttings) to the outdoors since it is in part shade for most of the day.

It looks like one of the tulips lost her petals. Just behind the naked tulip you can see the foliage of a ‘Stella de Oro’ daylily. It’s one of 13 divisions I made of a large chunk in the fall. I know 13 isn’t a lucky number, but I’m not superstitious. Maybe I’ll divide a few more, just to be safe.

Here’s a side shot of the tulips. On the left side of the photo you can see a Nandina looming over the bed. It is the largest plant in the bed and the only thing that remains from the previous owners of our house. I don’t like nandinas much since they are overplanted in our area but this one will stay where it is. The larger nandinas can be attractive but I don’t think much of the dwarf varieties.

Here’s another shot of the mixed tulip. It’s a pretty good photo if you want to see the parts of a flower. You can see the stigma in the center surrounded by the stamen.

I like how the edges of this tulip are highlighted in purple. It just makes it more interesting than a plain tulip. Another interesting thing about these white and purple tulips is that they start yellow! I thought at first that we had received the wrong kind but as they matured their true colors revealed themselves.

In this last picture you can see in the lower left a spirea that volunteered itself in our front bed. It must have been here before we bought the house. It’s had a rough time lately because of aphids.

There’s the tour of the tulips in our front garden. There’s more to highlight in our front yard but everything is still very much a work in progress. When the tulips fade the annual verbena I planted will take over (I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but I’m not superstitious). I may drop in a couple salvias when the cuttings I made get a little further along. Come back and take a look later this week at the corner shade garden I put in this weekend along with other front garden highlights!