Nice video. I plant 250,000 bulbs every fall in the northeast. We plant on a grand scale, meaning we plant the bulbs less than 2 inches apart (most home gardens suggest 4-6 inches apart). There’s a big festival celebrating our city’s Dutch heritage every spring. We even invite residents to come out and dig up bulbs to take home.
@@BURRiah haha that event is probably bringing a lot of traffic to this video, because all of a sudden we’ve found ourselves parents to at least 30 tulip bulbs each, which turns out to be a lot more than I thought 😂
Obviously I'm 16 months late to this video; however, if you add bone meal to your bed every fall and spring, you'll help your bulbs and they'll flower beautifully. Tulips need at least 12 weeks of cold in order to bloom. If you live in a hot zone like I do (9B), then you must either buy pre-chilled bulbs or dig them, wash them, and refrigerate them for 3+ months before planting again. Edited to add that I have phlox subulata planted in a berm. I love it. Nice video and well done.
I live in 9b. Im shocked to learn you have to dig them up and refrigerate before planting again. We do get enough cold months i think? I have neighbors that have tullips and dont do this but they seem to come up every year. Fascinated by your comment. Thanks
Love your beautiful tulips and creeping phlox especially in the rock wall setting. The info you provided was very informative and makes me feel better after spending quite alot on bulbs this fall that I can replant them again next spring as you described.
Thank you so much! I am glad to share my experience with tulips! And yes you can defiantly replant them next year and its always fun to add a few new tulips to ensure an amazing display! Happy Gardening :)
You really don't have to pull them and replant them as long as you let the foilage die back and add bone meal. Now, if you want to add some fresh bulbs to the mix to be sure of a gorgeous display, go for it. When I lived in Illinois, I never dug mine up except about every 3rd year. They got their 3 month chill period!
Love how you have planted these along a rock wall! It mimics how they would grow in nature (mountains of the Middle East). If you want to extend the bloom season of your ground cover areas, you could also plant hardy Plumbago (leadwort). It has nice foliage that would contrast the fern texture of your phlox and has pretty cobalt blue flowers. It is summer to fall blooming. The best varieties of perennializing tulips are species, kaufmanniana, gregii, Fosteriana, and Darwin hybrids. Narcissus do really well perennializing.
Thank you Dawn! I was wondering which tulip varieties perennialized (sp?) best. You know I too thought about the tulips growing wild in the valleys of the Tian Shan mountains. It's a far cry but my little rock wall maybe reminds them a little bit of home :) I'll look for a place to plant some narcissus.
@@tamaraallen4819 Two weeks away from magic. I put in “only” 900 last fall. I bring bouquets to the coffee shop. But only for the smiles I get from women. ❤️🤣
@@jr6999 No, I cheat some. Usually about 4 inches apart. I have 150 left to plant. To celebrate I decided to put in some daffodils too. The young man in the garden center sent me to aisle five. Hmm, as I got there I realized he thought I was going to plant light bulbs. Lol
It surprises me that people never mention that the really nice phase of tulip flowers doesn't last very long, and afterwards the plants slowly flop over and die off and look pretty terrible while they're doing so. This is particularly true because tulips are usually planted in really visible locations.
That doesn't matter in most areas because gardens are still sleeping when tulips are blooming and they're only waking up during the flopping phase and then everything else grows in and takes up the tulips space. It's not like it's taking anything away from your garden
Most gardeners don’t care 🤷🏿 much about that 😂. If you live in A northern state or Midwest ; after A long winter🥶; You’re extremely excited to see Gorgeous colors in your flower beds; hence why folks love planting Tulips 🌷💯
Zinnias are my favorite! I put them in summer when my tulips are done. I also planted some tulips bulbs today, along with crocus & muscari. The Muscari is purple so I planted it in front of these fiery orange tulips...I think the contrast will be nice in spring. Also the phlox is one of my favorites...just planted a bunch this year so hopefully will see a nice show next year
That sounds amazing! Honestly one of the hardest parts is selecting plants that work well and provide all year interest. I think Tulips + Zinnia are a great combo and the Monarch Butterflies agree. I think your garden will be amazing next spring!
I have creeping phlox, muscari, white candy tuft, (which drapes down the rocks just like your phlox does in the video). Beautiful combination and great if you have rocky soil….which I do. Also have daffodils, tulips all kinds of hostas, ferns, coral bells, Lenten roses in my shadier areas. I have lots of anchor plants such as azaleas, rhododendrons,hydrangeas, dogwoods, fruit and nut trees and of course roses since my husband never promised me a rose 🌹 garden…I planted my own🌹! 🤭 I watch videos like yours and appreciate you sharing your tips and beautiful yard. I love gardening and transforming areas and I am currently working on two different areas that will be secret gardens. It has been a lot of back breaking work over the years and 2 years ago we got a tractor which was a game changer. Cleared a whole back area that had lots of stumps, blackberry bushes, weeds that were up to my neck. Then we leveled it (this area was at least a quarter acre) then we bought in so many loads of top soil and planted 30 arborvitae’s to outline the area. I have been digging up and dividing plants from the other areas of my yard with most of the plants I listed in the beginning. I also collect my own seeds. I am a plant addict and RU-vid gardening is kinda like an alcoholic anonymous meeting for me…i stopped buying, started propagation, dividing collecting seeds and swapping with friends and neighbors. It’s an awesome support system 😊🌿🌹🌸🍀🌲🌻🌷🤭
You garden sounds AMAZING! I really like what you said about collecting seeds and dividing plants. These Tulips are the largest plant purchase I make by far. But I rarely go to the garden center much anymore, I started with one forget me not, now I have 50. I regularly cut bouquet of Zinnia and then rather than throw them out, I hang them to dry in the root cellar and the harvest all the seed in the fall and use that to replant my Zinnia every spring. Gardening is the study of life, art, and nature all rolled into one. You send like a kindred spirit, Thank you! :)
I love your display of tulips. So so beautiful!! You have taught me a lot in this video, and I am going to try to follow your advise for getting a full display like yours. I also love the flocks. Very pretty blue color. I want to try and plant these around my shed. Thanks again for sharing. I just had to subscribe. God Bless you and your family.
Thank you for identifying the grape hyacinths! I have some i received as a gift but didn't know what they were called. They are lovely and easy to grow
Wow! So beautiful. I love tulip . I have planted for a while now. Yes you're right on. The smaller bed is natural like and your rock beds are stunning. Great information on the work you did in order to create such beautiful beds
New subscriber. Great video. I love tulips. I’m in zone 9b Northern California. I plan to plant 600 bulbs in pots. Thank you for the idea of planting zinnias after my tulips die back. Your rock wall is so beautiful. God Bless you and your family 🙏🏾
All this time I thought I was doing something wrong because of getting a lot of foliage and fewer and fewer tulips. Your video has given me renewed confidence and a new plan. I'll aspire to have a bank of tulips like yours. Thank you. I have had muscari for many years and have had the best performance from the Armeniacum.
Thats cool I will have to checkout the Armeniacum. I am glad I could help shed some light on the reason tulips stop returning. They are returning just much smaller :) and without flowers. I have found that I can save about 15% of last years tulips and replant them but I still need to add 85% new bulbs for amazing flower beds. Happy gardening!
I agree with you, mixing them together is a beautiful array of color and flowers and I like that you have tips continually blooming instead of all dying at the same time.
So beautiful your arrangement of mixed tulips and the soft purple phlox, just love it. I know well where you live, so good for tulips and all sort of beautiful flowers. Thank you for sharing so much information and artistic garden.
WOW! Your tulip garden is beautiful! And even more beautiful that you got such a good deal at Costco! I have not had that problem with tulips not coming back as full. I am in Zone 4B and planted a cheap bag of tulips a few years back. They still come back every year...bigger, brighter, stronger...and of course, they have spread now. I read that some varieties do come back more reliable than others. Darwin hybrid tulips tend to return more reliably and with more vigor. I'm sure that must be what I have. That or Superman tulips! Ha! I agree with your assessment and tips though, but I would add that for better long-term results, look for Darwin's.
Another trick if you don't mind a spring mix of flowers is to add a bunch of daffodils in your flower beds to help fill in the bare spots where the tulips don't bloom. Daffodils aren't nearly as vibrant as your tulips, but reliable for coming back every year, and there are some beautiful varieties to choose from now. I can only plant daffodils due to the dear pressure in my area, but they are very beautiful as well.
So true! Daffodils are so much easier than tulips! They naturalize wonderfully and are poisonous so deer won't eat them. My original plan was to use daffodils in fact one of my favorite poems is by Willam Wordsworth is inspired by daffodils. BUT... then I made the mistake of planting a small bed of Tulips and my wife fell in love with them. Since then Tulip Mania has taken over my home and alas all sense of reason is lost. So I dig up and replant tulips as well as spray an egg based deer repellent in the season to keep away those adorable bambi pests. But let that be a warning to others, go with daffodils they are easy, beautiful and to quote Wordsworth "dance with the daffodils". Once you go with tulips the tulip mania really sets in :)
@@knitchywa - You know, my sister-in-law suggested the same thing. The deer in my area are nuts. They just eat around the daffs. Maybe I have to really mix them together within the same bunch. I used to plant a bunch of daffs then a bunch of tulips in between. I just gave up, nothing seemed to work. I only have Daffodils now, but they still nip, I think it's mostly accidental.
Just found you. Fabulous tulips.....one can never have too many. I live in the Great Lakes and we are getting 6+ inches of snow today! Early April Fools joke!!! Great tips and video.
Even passer-bys say how beautiful ur flowers are and they are gorgeous. Thank you for sharing this!! I love it where did u buy ur phlox amd how big were they when u planted them
Thank you for the info. It's a little bit of work if you have a huge area. I just want to do a meadow effect. Plus a pretty container of purple and white. Thank you also for letting us know Costco has bulbs at a really good price. My journey will start in late October here in Ga.
Or you can plant the small botanical ones which are far more reliably perennial. They self seed too: T. sylvestris, turkestanica, urumiensis, tarda, polychroma etc...
This was so helpful! and timely for me, as my tulips are starting to drop their petals. I moved from zone 5 to zone 4 and am still adjusting. I will lift for the first time as I have noticed that in two summers of leaving them in their planting spots in this zone, there has been a change in the flower size - fabulous in summer one, nice but not fab in summer two. Lifting will hopefully do the trick so that summer three is a good one for them. I also grow the species tulips, the low - original? - types, which I have never lifted and they seem to be fine. I would be interested to know if you 'feed' yours during the bloom period? Re your video - you are a good communicator (nice delivery pace and very clear) and it is easy to absorb the information you provide. Thank you!
Since you live in a colder zone, you don't really need to lift them as much as put bone meal scratched into the ground to feed the bulbs. If you lift them, then pick off the tiny bulbs and replant the bigger ones with bone meal. You could take a tray and plant the little ones to let them mature, if you wanted to go to the trouble of it.
Thanks for the tulip info. As for zinnias you mentioned, I've grown them for two years (the tall, "State Fair" version). They are lovely indeed, but you didn't mention that they are annuals. As I get older, it becomes more difficult to plant annuals, so I'm switching to perennials like coneflowers and such. The same is true of tulips... they need annual digging, sorting, cleaning, storing, and replanting. Love them, but so much work.
Very industrious! Stunning show. I am coaxing an alternating planting of pink white and blue ground phlox. I think your mono colour of blue sets off your multi coloured tulips best.
Thank you! I went with blue because it was easy to find, but you pink white and blue sounds wonderful. I planted a few (10) white creeping phlox a few years ago but they haven't done nearly as well as the blue ones. Happy gardening!
@@postbeam8200 yes the blues seem to take off and keep longer than the other colours. I find blue overall does well in many perennials. Yet when it comes to the tall garden phlox, the whites which come later than the others in my garden last longest, right into the fall. Long live your garden!!😉
In the UK I plant the mid season Darwin tulips for naturalising in my borders. But I plant 12" deep! This stops the squirrels digging them up, plus the little bulbuls that form on the mother bulb get a chance to develop properly, and I get decent flowers year on year, which increase in number. So if you choose the right varieties you can avoid all of this digging up and replanting. Having said that, if you don't mind the work (and cost) involved, you'll always get the very best displays by replanting every year. Your display is stunning.
Very interesting, I had heard that planting deep (as in 12") would help compress the bulb and result in less division and better naturalizing. I will endeavor to do more research on Darwin tulips when I buy next years batch. It's funny but where I live the squirrel population do not bother my tulips at all. I had someone recommend putting down chicken wire on top of the tulips to create a barrier for squirrels but I never have needed to. I put down shredded leaves on top to help compost them and provide some "mulch" but I only plant 3x the height of my tulips so about 6-8" deep. But it definitely is a lot of work and some cost to replant every year, Thanks for the compliment! Happy gardening!
Yes you're right about the bulbils, I got it the wrong way round. In fact burying bulbs deep prevents bulbils from developing properly so all the main bulb's energy goes into producing flowers again the following year. Squirrels are a nightmare here and freshly planted tulips in pots do need protecting with chicken wire or similar. From watching US videos I gather that like us, many rural areas have a real deer problem too. But plants and wildlife are what enriches us too, so hey ho, let's enjoy. Happy planting.
@@toesinsand1903 Oh yes, do plant those varieties of tulips I mentioned really deeply that you wish to leave in the ground to naturalise. I was only modifying my explanation as to why it's a good idea to do so. This method is probably not so good for the really fancy late flowering tulips but for the early and mid season tulips it seems to work.
Beautiful garden! I was wondering why mines look so deformed. I was never a fan of plants that have bulbs like lilies and tulips happen to be in my garden. I probably won’t keep them because of how much work I need to put in from watching your video. Good tips and it’s not for everyone for sure.
Yes! Honestly when I bought my home my entire garden was covered with them. Millions upon millions of those bulbs which are impossible to get rid of.It was like a horror show and I can’t bring myself to look at them anymore 😂
Hello I love your tulip garden, and more liked when hear you are going to dig them up and plant Zinnia's , what exactly I am looking for, I used to plant Zinnia's but this year I planted Tulips as well, all looks good however would like to know, when I can dig them out to plant Zinnia's. Thank you so much and will appreciated for your comments . Regards..
In my area (South Jersey) the muscari tend to bloom in phase more with the daffodils. By the time the tulips start to show the muscari are usually past their prime. The rich blue of the muscari and yellow daffs make a great match.
Only a year late on viewing! Awesome design and advice. So, would you suggest I just keep adding a few tulips each year to keep it full and pretty? As a senior I can no longer do much digging and getting on my knees is only in my past now. You could make a nice living designing landscape. Very talented. Thank you Mary
so pretty! I'm sure you already know, but you don't have to buy more creeping phlox plants. You can divide the plants you have to make more plants. I have done it with mine--in a very quick sloppy way too--and it has worked wonderfully. For anyone reading: Just get a trowel and dig up a portion of your creeping phlox and plant the clump in the area where you want it. Super simple. Sometimes it may not bloom the year you do this or it may not bloom until it gets well established, but it will, just give it time. Keep it moist the first couple months.
Your absolutely right creeping phlox is not hard to divide. I tried that in the beginning but I found that the plant's took several years to grow large enough to start spreading. Sadly, I am just too impatient so I just buy the 1 gal size and plant new ones rather than divide. The good news I have yet to need to replace a single creeping phlox, the are a buy it once kinda plant for me. Occasionally I need to go back and fill in a bare spot where they didn't spread as I had hoped, but basically they are very reliable. And reliable plants are a gardeners best friend. Thank you for your suggestion!
Yes. While it is labor intensive, I have heard that digging them up once the leaves die all the way (brown but still visible on the soil surface) is the way to go. The moisture of the summer plus the heat triggers something in the bulbs to keep dividing smaller and smaller. The mother bulb may still divide after the original flower, but if you want the babies to pack on weight you have to force them to do it (prevent flowering for a year or two) and also remove them before summer and continued moisture makes them divide before they are a good size again. And if you actually are going to do the work of this, make a crop bed that isn't blended with any other plants during the off years that you can harvest like potatoes until you have the sizes you want. Note: some varieties like Darwin hybrids let you plant and forget because they don't react nearly as much to the summer conditions.
I buy my bulbs at Costco too as they are really reasonable. I shop at different Costcos & search for the different varieties at that time. Darwin tulips seem to come back pretty well for me….I’m still researching Triumph ones.
Make cages from 1” wide hard wire cloth to plant them in, especially if you have gophers and moles but if just squirrels then place some chicken wire over them until they begin to sprout (or leave it down).
I use a product that has "putrescent egg solids" in it called Deer Stopper, but they add Rosemary Oil so it smells fine. I spray it after every rain, so a few times a week while the tulips are blooming, then after they start to fade I stop, but at that point the deer know better :)
How to get them to come back? Replant!!! Really pretty! I like the mixture of bulbs. The only thing is that for the average gardener, not a Dutch breeder, the only way to keep them coming back and look plentiful is to simply replant every fall.
I live in zone 4 B and have never dug any up...shame on me...but my tulip beds always look like your first-year planting. Maybe it's the zone I'm in? Also, some tulip types are better at over-wintering than others and will come back the next year like clockwork. I only plant Darwins and Triumphs which seem to do great. I also buy my bulbs on-line from Holland Bulbs and Tulip World. I have at least 1500 tulips in my gardens, and they just keep multiplying. This is actually the first year I'm going to dig some up this summer, only because I plan to add some other flowers in one of the current beds, so they need to be relocated. Also, if you plan to leave your bulbs in the ground once the leaves die back, you can't plant annuals over them! The watering of the annuals will rot the bulbs. instead, you can sink pots into the ground between the bulbs, plant annuals in the pots only, so you can control the water. PS - Your tulips are beautiful and clearly impress the neighbors!
Your tulips are beautiful. Personally, I like the 'disorganized' look. Coming from Vegas, if I see a well placed organized garden, I am reminded of a hotel. lol I have a question, that I have not been able to find an answer to. Hope you can help me. I live in zone 6. I have a lot of bulbs, including tulips. What I want to do is lift some of my tulips from the garden, this fall, and transplant them to a different area of the garden, right after lifting. Do you happen to have any suggestions? Thanks
I love it 😍! I planted over 500 last year but spaced them 1-2" apart and wished I didn't... I'm digging them all up this week and starting over soon with more tulip bulbs on the way. I stick to the Darwin Hybrid. I try to get the ones I really love online but gosh dang, they were sold out by July 🙄
Thank you so much! :) I too was worried that Costco would sell out of tulips early so as soon as they showed up in August I bought a bunch and stored them in the basement to keep them cool. I honestly don't really pay much attention to the cultivar since price and variation in color and bloom period is my primary focus. A lot of professional gardeners (Keukenhof Gardens for example) consider Tulips and annual. I kinda think of Tulips as an annual with a 15% discount since about 15 percent of my tulips are large enough to replant from the previous year. I am going to try an experiment planting various sized bulbs starting at about ¾ inch across and going up to the 1.5 inch standard tulip to see what size of existing tulip is big enough to salvage and replant when I dig them up in the fall. Happy Gardening! 🌷
