When I was a kid each year in spring I got some new clothes or shoes. Spring is all about the new. New growth, new birds and new shoes…and new tulips. Each fall I chose a few new tulips to try. It’s a minor expense with a great pay out. I always seem to forget over the winter what I had planted and I try to avoid reading tags and just let myself be surprised. It’s like finding Easter eggs.

Here are the new ones to me for 2013:

I’ve grown many Tulipa greggii hybrids over the years for my clients and myself. They are reliable and early and if properly placed returning year after year. This was the first time I grew ‘Pinocchio’. It charmed more than any other greggi tulip I’ve grown before. Nice pointy elongated buds, thus ‘Pinocchio’, and a great red with white piping.

Another early one from a group of reliable hardy tulips is ‘Sweetheart’, a T. fosteriana hybrid. I grew it among Euphorbia robbiae  (Mrs. Robb’s Bonnet) and with the narcissus ‘Stainless’, which turned out to be an elegant accident.

I love yellow and in particular yellow tulips. ‘Jaap Groot’, a large Darwin hybrid, has an exceptionally beautiful moony luminosity in our gray springs here.

And with great foliage, too, often a not the case with tulips, or many bulbs for that matter.

I always plant a row of tulips in the green house for early bouquets. Sweet ‘Sorbet’ is just starting to bloom when many of the tulips outside are nearly finished.

As is ‘Carousel’ a fringed tulips with splashes of red on a cream field. I was expecting more of a carnival; she is truly elegant.

I am always skeptical of catalogues touting black flowers. They always seem to disappoint. But not ‘Havran’. In bud they were a sooty black.

And in flower a deep eggplant purple, not black but so dark, especially from a distance, I did not feel duped by the catalogues for once. Notice the flower to the left actually has 8 petals. Tulips usually only have 6. If I get it to grow on I’ll call it ‘Batman’.