Tulips: the flowers that get on with almost everything else in the garden

03.05.2024 - 14:20 / irishtimes.com / Fionnuala Fallon

It’s tulip time, those fleeting weeks of the year when Irish gardens are filled with the graceful, brilliantly colourful flowers of what must be one of the world’s best-loved spring flowering bulbs.

The most companionable of plants, the versatile tulip gets along well with pretty much everything else in the garden. This is why its flowers look equally at home in a traditional country cottage plot or a chic town courtyard, or when used to add grace and seasonality to the most elegant of spring-flowering containers.

Technically speaking, it’s also the easiest of plants to grow. Nature does almost all the hard work for us, by packing enough energy into each fleshy bulb to fuel its cycle of growth so that all it needs is water and light. We just have to pop these plump plants-in-waiting into the ground in late autumn/early winter, and up they’ll come the following spring.

Or at least that was traditionally the case until climate change put a spoke in the wheels, by increasing the risk of the dreaded tulip fire, or Botrytis tulipferae to give it its proper name. Only evident once the plant is in active growth in spring when the leaves and flowers appear blotched, spotted, pocked and distorted as well as prone to rot, this fungal disease has taken hold in many gardens throughout Europe in recent years. Carried there by infected bulbs or sometimes by fungal spores carried on the wind from infected plants, it can remain active in the soil for up to three years to infect any new plantings. Mild wet weather greatly favours its spread (the fungus is active at temperatures between 5 degrees to 27 degrees), one of the reasons why traditional advice is to hold off planting tulips bulbs until late autumn/early winter when the weather