Combining Tulips with Annuals and Perennials

Although tulips look fabulous when planted in large drifts, they look even better when combined with other flowering bulbs, annuals, or perennials. Here are some lovely combination ideas that are easy to replicate in your garden.

Tulips with other flowering bulbs

• Extend the bloom season of your favorite tulips
  Combine them with flower bulbs that will bloom before, during, and after them. Remember, spring has three seasons, not just one. Call them early spring, mid-spring, and late spring. Now choose spring bulbs that bloom in each and, with minimal effort, you can have month after month of spring color.
  Plant low-growing bulbs, such as grape hyacinths, in front of taller bulbs, such as daffodils, or mingle the bulbs together for a more natural effect.
• Play with flower colors.
  The fun part of bulb gardening is dreaming up fabulous bloom schemes. The color palette is endless. Just choose what you like best. How about rich purple tulips (Tulip ‘Purple Prince’) intermixed with purple-flamed orange tulips (Tulip ‘Prinses Irene’) or fragrant deep blue hyacinths (Hyacinth ‘Blue Jacket’) with jaunty yellow daffodils (Daffodil ‘Dutch Master’).
  For an early-blooming ‘go girl’ color combo, try pairing low-growing Pink Glory of the Snow (Chionodoxa luciliae Pink Giant) as an underplanting for peony-shaped, fragrant, and extremely long-lived pink tulips (Tulip ‘Angelique’).
  How about using various types of flower bulbs in the same colors to provide a subtle harmonious effect? An example: combine tall and shorter spring-flowering bulbs such as bright pink tulips and pastel pink hyacinths.
• Create a floral carpet.
  Plant large quantities – as many as two or three hundred of the same low-flowering kind of flower bulb – next to one another. For instance, use Crocuses or Anemone blanda (Grecian Windflowers). The floral carpet effect can also be achieved by using taller flower bulbs such as tulips and daffodils. Either way, the color impact is overwhelming!

Here are some bulb combination ideas to get you started:

Anemone blanda, Muscari, Tulip ‘Peach Blossom’	Tulip ‘Heart’s Delight’, Hyacinth ‘Woodstock’, Muscari
Anemone blanda ‘Blue Shades’, Tulip Pinocchio	Crocus vernus ‘Pickwick’, Tulip ‘Cape Cod’
Tulip ‘Ballade, Daffodil ‘Jack Snipe’, Muscari	Anemone, Tulips ‘Ballade’, ‘Ballerina’, ‘White Triumphator’

Tulips with annual and perennial flowers

• Annuals.
  Plant them with tulip bulbs in the fall if you live in a warm winter area. Plant them in the spring, as soon as you see the first tulip shoots emerge from the soil if you live in a cold winter area. If the annual flowers are already blooming, they’ll be ready for the opening tulip flowers. Remember to keep low-growing annuals in front of taller tulip varieties.
• Perennials.
  Some perennial plants are particularly suited for combinations with tulips as they attain their height fairly quickly in the spring and produce substantial foliage that hides the senescing tulip foliage from view. Here is a list of successful companion plants:
  Aquilegia (Columbine)
  Aurinia saxitilis (Basket-Of-Gold)
  Brunnera macrophylla (Siberian Bugloss)
  Dicentra spectabilis (Bleeding Heart)
  Erysimum (Wallflower)
  Iberis sempervirens (Candytuft)
  Myosotis (Forget-Me-Not),
  Phlox subulata (Creeping Phlox)
  Or even Hemerocallis (Daylilies), which do not flower at the same time as the tulips, but will hide their dying and yellowing foliage when they are finished blooming.

Tulips ‘Angelique’, ‘China Pink’, ‘Menton’, Daffodil ‘Geranium, Dicentra spectabilis	Daffodil ‘Geranium’, Tulip ‘Curly Sue’, Dicentra spectabilis
Tulips ‘Ballade’, Don Quichotte’, ‘Shirley’, Phlox subulata	Tulips ‘Negrita’, ‘Don Quichotte’ ‘Barcelona’, Pink Impression’, Brunnera sacrophylla, Euphorbia
Tulip ‘Mona Lisa’, Erysimum	Tulip ‘White Triumphator’, Myosotis

Fall is a perfect time to start for home gardeners looking to create fabulous tulip combinations. Fall is the season for planting hardy, spring-flowering bulbs and it is a great season for planting perennials as well. With a bit of daydreaming and a weekend of digging in the ground, a gardener of any skill level can now plan for a garden where “things happen happily” from spring into winter, with dashes of color in just the right places.