Join the tulip frenzy: Get bulbs in the ground now if you want a kaleidoscope of colour in spring

No spring is complete without a display of gorgeous, if frivolous, tulips. I can understand why people in 17th -century Netherlands lost their heads over these blooms. 

While most spring bulbs can be planted earlier in the autumn, November is the best month to get tulips in the ground. The colder temperatures reduce the risk of the plant succumbing to the disease tulip fire. 

Cultivated in Turkey 1,000 years ago, the flower first came to Western Europe in the 1500s. 

Within a century, ‘Tulipomania’ had struck, with some of the most desirable bulbs costing more than a house at the time. 

Inevitably, the bubble burst, but these colourful flowers have remained favourites ever since. 

MIX AND MATCH 

There are almost as many ways to plant tulips as there are varieties, from placing a pot of scarlet blooms by your front door to incorporating wilder species of tulip in your garden. 

At Great Dixter in East Sussex, the home of the late Christopher Lloyd, head gardener Fergus Garrett and his team plant tulips and other bulbs one cultivar to a pot, by the porch, giving them a palette of colour and form which they can then rearrange to create different effects. 

You can try this at home by choosing complementary shades such as coral single-flowered Tulipa ‘Menton’ with the almost black double-flowered T. ‘Black Hero’. 

If you are planting into a border, think about what will grow alongside your tulips. Peachy blooms such as T. ‘Apricot Pride’ and T. ‘Mango Charm’ work well protruding from a haze of blue forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvestris).  Wallflowers and primroses also make good companions. 

Shape is as important as colour, with flowers resembling cups, or champagne flutes, with petals that are smooth-edged, pointy-tipped or fringed. 

For sumptuous blooms, grow peony-flowered tulips such as T. ‘La Belle Époque’ which fades from dark blush to palest coffee, T. ‘Copper Image’ with warm tones, or pink T. ‘Angelique’. 

Lily-flowered tulips have long stems with petals curving out at the top. Varieties include the new yellow T. ‘Crown Jewel’, pink and white striped T. ‘Marilyn’ or orange T. ‘Ballerina’. 

WOW FACTOR 

If you have the space, choose a single variety and plant 50 or more bulbs to add the wow factor. 

I have done this in my parents’ garden with T. ‘White Triumphator’, with furled flowerheads that begin an elegant lime green before opening out to a beautiful pure white. 

Species tulips are smaller and wilder, popping up earlier in the spring, and look great naturalised in a lawn. 

T. sylvestris has diminutive golden flowers with a windswept look and T. bakerii ‘Lilac Wonder’ has wide open pale purple flowers that have a blotch of gold at the centre. 

Tulip bulbs should be planted at two to three times their height, with the pointed end uppermost and a spacing of about two times their length.