gardening at home with sarah | may tulips
In this video, join Sarah for a walk around Perch Hill as she shares her favourite tulips for companion planting, growing in shade and pots.
There are so many ways that you can use tulips with veg, and in borders, and this is one of the most successful, this has honestly been here for ten years now, so it’s our Globe Artichokes, and through them are planted ‘Spring Green’ which is that lovely green and white tulip, and ‘Green Wave’, which is the pink and green parrot. And then comes Allium ‘Purple Rain’ which is one of the earliest alliums. Then come other alliums too, we’ve got cristophii in here, ‘Globemaster’, and then sphaerocephalon, so this looks wonderful for ages and then come dahlias, but the tulips really start the procession off, and are totally perennial.
I’m now round on the south face of our veg bank, and one of the favourite bits in the garden at the moment of mine is here, just this little corner where we’ve got this bulb collection, this tulip collection running all the way up both sides of the path, but because it’s shady it hasn’t yet gone over, and you’ve got the rosemary and the kalette flowers, and the chicory, and then these beautiful, beautiful tulips, and if you listen, there’s the most incredible hum and buzz of bees, and they’re just loving it, and so am I.
I really want to show you the Oast Garden before it all goes over, and tulips move into alliums, and I really think it’s been one of the best years for tulips that I can remember. So this one is a pink and purple double tulip collection which we’ve been trialling, and it’s been in flower for a month, and then we’ve got what I think of as the new Venetian Collection here, this was an experiment which I completely love, really rich, luscious, velvety colours with the new one ‘Slawa’ and ‘Atilla Graffiti’, honestly that has just lasted such a long time, I think it’s because the days have been hot, but actually the nights have been really cold, and so they’ve just gone on and on, and then this last pair of pots has got ‘Merlot’ and then this lovely tulip called ‘Dream Touch’ underneath it, and, I mean to be honest I’ve just loved the lot of them and what I would say is the secret to the Oast Garden pots is twofold, the first is the size, so that you can really get this splendid bank of colour, and the second is the layering, so these are in a triple layer, a triple lasagne, one on top of another, and they just make their way round each other and come up to flower like that.
