April 2013

Washington is nearly as famous as Holland for its tulip fields. Over the passed few weeks I travelled to south Woodburn to see the tulip fields of the Holland America Bulb Farms and north to the Skagit Valley to the kitschy Tulip Town and the classy Roozengaarde.

As they say  a picture is worth a thousand words… and those pictures don’t do it justice.

So how can these words?

The pictures:

All good things come to an end.

In the beginning there was the tulip. And it was wild.

Nearly half the 100 species of Tulipa in the world come from a small range of mountains called the Tian Shan that dominates Kyrgyzstan and embraces northern China. Though there is one species that is native as far west as Spain—its name Tulipa australis, literally western tulip, shows what an anomaly it is— most tulips hail from Central Asia. The tulips moved west with man. First into Turkey where it flourished as a garden plant during the Ottoman Empire and then to Europe and in particular Holland, where it was coaxed and coddled into what are now supreme spring garden bulbs. It is a rather brief history of cultivation just over 600 years compared to that of peonies and irises whose cultivation dates back millennia, or cabbage which is said to have been cultivated for the last 7000 years.

I, among many others, have been growing some of these species tulips far from the mountains of Central Asia.  I love their delicacy and subtle charms, a world away from the decadent exuberance of the hybrid tulips. The following gallery of species tulip photos were all taken this spring throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Tulipa turkestanica is one of the first to open. This year it began blooming in early March in the Snoqualmie Valley. I grow it in our dry raised driveway, where I grow all my species tulips. Our heavy alluvial soils would be death to these tiny bulbs from the mountains of Turkestan.

My friend Jon Dove has been growing this selection of T. praestans called ‘Fusilier’ for years above this brick wall which provides heat from the afternoon sun and good drainage through the soggy parts of the year, the ideal spot for a species tulip. It also began blooming in early March this very warm winter.

I traveled down to Oregon last week to meet some real species bulb experts. Jane McGary who grows all her tulips from wild collected seed and in the shelter of an elaborate bulb house, recommends not growing species tulips and commercial hybrid tulips in close proximity. The later, she says, carry viruses that could be detrimental to their smaller progenitors.

 This lovely yellow tulip in Jane’s collection is an unidentified species collected in the mountains of Iran.

Another of Jane’s seedling tulips in her bulb house growing with fritillaries, her true passion. (See Jane’s Fritillaria article in Pacific Horticulture)

Near Salem, Oregon, where lilacs and crabapples were already in bloom I was lucky to still find a few tulips in bloom at Mark Akimoff’s species bulb nursery Illahe Rare Bulbs. T. ostowskiana has immediately on entered my list of must have species. Lovely showy flowers and look at the wacked-out wavy foliage.

Another first for me is this T. didierii one of the western tulips found in the mountains of northern Italy. In this twisted-tipped bud you can seen the advent of the hybrid lily-flowered tulips.

Closer to home I visited the garden of Rick Kyper, garden designer and bulb enthusiast. His home garden is a treasure trove of rare plants. I was delighted to find T. cretica still in bloom there. The way everyone mentions its name it sounds like the Holy Grail for bulb collectors. Its subtly and beauty were nearly impossible for my camera to catch on that windy and cloudy day.

Rick grows most of his species tulips in pots where he can protect them from pests—rodents love tulips bulbs— and control the amount od moisture they get. But he did plant a few in his garden, where they seem to thrive on the roots of trees and in among other plants. Here T. saxatilis burst out from perennials on the edge of the sidewalk just a few days away from opening.

Back in my own garden T. clusiana, a selection that entered cultivation in 1607, showing its beautiful beet red base on one of the few sunny days we’ve had this spring. This bulb came to me from Old House Gardens (more about them later) who acquires many bulbs from Hortus Bulborum in Limmen, Holland, sort of a living museum of bulbs.