Spring flowering plants, bulbs and blossom
My final tulip offering is ‘Prinses / Princess Irene which is the exotic colour of a sunset. Electric orange and stripes of violet and rust make this one of the most exciting tulips I grew this year. It is long-lasting and contrasts beautifully with a very dark tulip such as ‘Paul Scherer’ or ‘Havran’. They seem to glow in the sun and look fantastic in pots.
One of the last tulips to show is this lovely slightly scented ‘Bruine Wimpel’ or ‘Malaika’ described as brandy-snap or caramel brown and lilac-pink. Not a brown tulip as such, but like a delicate tea stained silk, the colours are unusual and quite beautiful. And long-lasting too.
I’m not sure if mine were true to form as they appeared much more orange than I thought they would be, although in the sunlight it is hard to capture their true colours. Next to my other orange tulips though they definitely had a brownish hue.
Although I prefer the bronze, copper and almost black tulips the most, I did plant a few pink ones.
This is a late flowering one (supposed to be May) called ‘Greenland‘ – an orchid rose-pink with green stripes. With all the sunshine we have been having, it opened this week!
This collection is from Sarah Raven and called the Scented Copper Tulip Collection – includes tulips ‘Ballerina’ (very highly scented), ‘Bruine Wimpel’ (lightly scented), ‘Sarah Raven’ (unscented) and Tulip whittallii (highly scented).
I’m not sure about the scent, I shall have to get a bit closer to them, but the colours are fabulous and in the sunshine they glow like stained-glass lanterns and I particularly love the shape of the lily-flowered goblets in deep damson.
My favourite combination is this collection at the back of the garden, some are in pots and others were randomly planted in the raised bed where the forget-me-nots do their thing, rampantly marching through the garden and self-seeding everywhere. I pulled out loads of seedlings in the autumn, but they still manage to dominate the garden at this time of year. I do love their pretty blue faces though and they contrast nicely with the tall ‘Orange Emperor’, the coppery orange ‘Whittallii’ and the rich red, lily-flower ‘Sarah Raven’ tulips. Top right is called ‘National Velvet’ a glossy, red flower and one which appeared yesterday.
Oh, and the little yellow one that sneaked into this collage is a species variety, called ‘Tardis’, a prostrate plant with multiple flowers consisting of yellow petals with white tips. It supposedly naturalises and self-seeds. Planted under the corkscrew hazel (that curly tree that always seems to pop up in my sunsets) I am hoping it goes mad!
