This spring no doubt you’ll have seen me share pictures of one or two tulips here and on my social channels, and I’m very grateful to organised me who last autumn, not only bought bulbs but also planted them. Or most of them anyway. I found another packet in the greenhouse last week which didn’t quite make it into a pot - well there’s always this year for those…
But the ones that did make it into pots, bloomed and bloomed and brought a very welcome pop of colour to our garden, so this post is sharing those, and celebrating them. I planted them in large plastic flowerpots, so that the plastic pots could be easily lifted out of the terracotta pots once they’d finished flowering - this worked out well and is something I’d do again and recommend.
From inside the house it was great to get the pops of colour and to watch them change colours, and then one day they were gone. Their petals dropped completely, but soon to be replaced by the alliums. Given my success with the tulips I had high hopes for the alliums, but it was not to be. My ‘old faithfuls’ - the alliums that flower on the patio flowered as they usually do, but the ones in pots were sadly disappointing. They flowered but were floppy small heads, rather than the brilliantly bold spheres I’d been hoping for - next year maybe!
The tulips also worked out well as we put our house on the market at the end of March and so it was good to have some colour in the garden, and for it not to be “just green” which has been MOH’s observation in years gone by.
These pots were further up the garden, so not visible from the house, and every time without fail I walked past these the colour gave me a surprise - it shouldn’t have, but it did. So there really is something in that saying about not being able to see your whole garden from a single vantage point.
The detail on the petals was fantastic and I couldn’t resist playing with the contrast and colour editing tools a little, well quite a lot - the background foliage is a little on the purple side!
Hopefully I’ll remember to be just as organised this autumn!