Blog: These tough little flowers will brighten any pot or border
If you’re looking for small bulbs with impact that don’t have to be planted every year, consider species tulips. Unlike their bigger cousins, these low-growing botanical varieties quietly get on with naturalising and spreading, so your display gets better with time, forming good-sized clumps.
Don’t think small means unimpressive, as that’s far from the case. They are descendants of the original wild tulips native to mountainous regions in Central Asia, so are extremely tough. They’ll perform best in a sunny spot with reasonably fertile, free-draining soil. However, my clumps of T. Little Beauty and T. saxatilis Lilac Wonder flower well in a spot right under the hedge in dappled shade.
Plant bulbs from November to December, 10-15cm deep and 10-15cm apart. Remove the flowers after they have faded and apply a balanced liquid fertiliser for a month before they die down. As they’re compact, they are ideal for pots. Read more about tulips on my Spring Bulbs page.
My favourite species tulips
- Tulipa Little Beauty (RHS AGM): upright bowl-shaped flowers. The hot pink petals often have a green flush on their outer edges, while the inside eye is a mix of creamy white and rich blue, 15cm tall.
- T. saxatilis and T. saxatilis Lilac Wonder (cultivar, RHS AGM). Very similar, with mauve-pink flowers, a paler interior, and a luminous, well-defined eye, 25cm tall. Found on the Southern Aegean islands, Crete, Western Turkey, now naturalised in the rest of Greece, Italy and the Scilly Islands.
- T. tarda (RHS AGM): Lance-shaped green leaves, which in early to mid-spring are crowned with white-tipped yellow flowers, 15cm tall. Looks almost like a poached egg flower.
- T. Clusiana var Chrysantha (RHS AGM): Slender, red and yellow flowers bloom on strong stems, 25cm tall.
- T. turkestanica (RHS AGM): Grows up to seven flowers per stem. Each cream flower has a deeper shade of yellow in the centre and at the base, 30cm tall.
- T. Tiny Timo: Red blooms with white stripes in the centre, 40cm tall..
You’ll find a good selection of species tulips at www.jparkers.co.uk.
