My Tiny PlotMy Zig-Zag Tulip Garden
This year I decided to plant up a zig-zag Tulip garden in one of the kitchen garden beds. My plan is to use this bed for early cutting flowers and then once the bulbs are lifted this will become the Tomato bed.
I planted the bulbs back in November and they started to pop through in early Spring.
They grew nicely and then…
Finally all of them are out now. I’m really happy with how it looks. Infact, I think I could have put more in. There are quite large gaps in between the flowers and next year I will pack more in to make the most of the space. Maybe some Grape Hyacinths?
Here’s my, very rough, plan. The flowers are as follows:
20 x Tulip Couleur Cardinal (deep red)
8 x Tulip Wildhof (cream)
8 x Tulip White Parrot (white)
9 x Hyacinth Double Hollyhock (Pink)
Really great and creative idea! I enjoy the colors of tulips. I love your blog and these photos!
Gorgeous! – I never thought about digging up my bulbs- but then I have mine scattered in my lawn as well as bed in the front of my house. I first learnt about scattering various spring bulbs in grassy areas when living in Rotterdam – it makes for a pleasant change to half green-brown grass not yet fully growing in early spring.
My neighbor has a checkerboard pattern with her tulips- she says the trick is to think about the number you need and multiply by 5- the bulbs should be only half a bulb to a bulb or so away from each other for a full tulip field. I like your idea for including another zigzag of other flowers- spring will start sooner and last longer!
I love the idea of incorporating patterns in the garden! Nicely done.
Hi Jennifer, yes I will be digging them up as I need the bed for something else later. I suppose you could leave them in if they were deep enough and you only wanted to grow things with shallow roots like Salad crops, Radish, Spinach etc.
Love it but yep I reckon you could difinately fit more in!! Delightful idea and such a beautiful shade of red xx
The tulips look wonderful, but I’d be wary of planting grape hyacinths anywhere that you don’t want them to stay for ever…
Beautiful as they are, they are really really hard to get rid of if you ever need the space for something else.
The tulips look great! I also have a macro lens except its the Canon 100mm f2.8L IS and I also have a 6D, but upgraded from the 550D. Those flowers will be a great addition to your garden and give you something fun to photograph when they’re at full bloom.
They look great. I think you’d have to be careful to remove the grape hyacinths before they self-seed themselves. I’m growing them in a space where I want them to do that but they can be a pest if you want the space for other things.