Planting A Tulip Garden in Spring

Springtime is full of all kinds of color.  New foliage comes out, flowers bloom, and all kinds of fresh growth begins.  One of the classic plants many people think of for spring is the tulip.  Tulips are usually best planted in the fall about 6 inches deep in the garden, but sometimes we forget to plant tulips in the fall and might like to add some color to the garden in spring.  This month Lowe’s Creative Ideas gave me the opportunity to do that with my garden.  I selected a few tulips and other flowers and added them to our front garden to create a fresh updated look for our front walkway based around the tulip!

I began by finding a few really nice red tulips.  There is a little orange fringe on the petals of the flowers that makes them really pop out in the landscape.  I wanted to put them in pots along our front walkway using the background of some tulips we’ve had growing now for several years.   For pots I selected two glazed clay pots with a maroon base and tan color toward the top.   The purple tulips are named ‘Negrita’ and the white ones are ‘Shirley’.  Both have returned reliably for several years now.

In the potted arrangement I gathered other hot colored flowering plants like these African daisies,

some Gerbera daisies, and some coreopsis.  I also added in a purple sweet potato vine to spill out of the pot into the garden.

Together they made this arrangement:

and this potted arrangement:

When the tulip flowers fade leave the foliage alone to gather energy for the bulb.  When the foliage turns brown or yellowy you can cut it back and let the bulbs rest.  You can transplant tulips after blooming to another location and replace them in the pot with a summer bloomer or an ornamental grass.  An annual purple colored grass like a pennisetum or cordyline would work perfectly!  I’ll probably plant a purple leaf basil into their spot once the flowers fade.