May is the month when my tulips are the prettiest. The earlier varieties are still blooming, and the later varieties have just started opening, making the two small tulip beds colorful and full of flowers.
This year the tulips started opening earlier. After the March cold, the April warmth woke up all of the bulbs, and all of the tulips exploded at the same time. Both later and earlier varieties started opening almost at the same time, and by the end of April, all of the tulips have opened. They were even faster than the daffodils, which are still starting to form flower heads.
The first to open, like last year, was the Blue parrot tulip. From what I could see, all of the bulbs survived the winter, and there is the same number of flowers on the bed. Blue parrot tulips are the earliest, but their flowers survive almost a whole month. Also, their height protects them from the wind, which is excellent considering how many wind days we have.
Right after the Blue parrot, my Honeymoon tulips started flowering too. The Honeymoon tulip had a really rough winter. There are only a couple of bulbs left. I don’t know what happened, the winter wasn’t too cold, so they didn’t freeze. Most likely they were eaten by the bugs, which are all over the garden due to the mild winter. The ones that did manage to open are as pretty as ever, the white petals are very noticeable, and even the few ones that survived look good on the bed.
The tall varieties, like I said before, have been moved. I’ve decided to use the border bed to plant zucchinis, so last year I moved the tall tulips to the upper part of the garden. The new strawberry bed has been divided in half, and a part of the bed now contains tulips.
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The Black parrot tulip transferred its color to some of the exquisite tulips, and now I have black peony tulips. Also, the exquisite tulips are now, instead of only being purple, giving me mixed color heads, with white and purple striped petals. There are also some “regular” orange tulips, which are probably the result of the original tulips that were used to get the black or purple hybrid. I didn’t have any orange tulips in the garden, so they weren’t the result of some forgotten bulb.
This is actually great because I thought of this part of the bed as a wild tulip/flower bed which will be covered with wildflowers such as oxeye daisies and grown flowers like tulips. I also plan to plant here some new perennial flowers, so the tulips will be part of the flowering patch which will have something flowering at all times. If I manage to get more and more baby tulips, even if they will be all orange the bed will fill up naturally, if not I will buy more bulbs next year.
Both tulip beds are still just at the beginning, but I’m hoping that soon they will be a great welcoming scene. There’s not much going on in the garden while they are flowering and most of the beds are empty, so a big tulip bed full of colors will be a perfect addition
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