The Cutting Garden is suddenly coming alive following the long dull winter. After what feels like many months of empty beds I can now see the colourful ranks of tulips long before I walk through the gate to the Cutting Garden.
I am so glad that I decided to plant tulips in the Cutting Garden this year. I have always just grown them in my garden beds and tried to cut a few discretely if I wanted some for the house. This year I have more than enough to fill every room with fresh tulips – my only worry is that the warm weather is wreaking havoc with my successional planting plan – even the late flowering Lily tulips are starting to flower now.
Above you can see Blue Diamond, a violet coloured double early tulip that is new to me this year.
This is Rococo, an early flowering frilly parrot tulip. Usually it flowers on a short stem, but this year both here and in the garden it has a very long stem. It is planted here with the later flowering Carnaval de Nice, which I would expect to flower in early May. This year I already have it in flower in the main garden and the buds you can see will be opening very soon.
This week I have planted out the sweet pea seedlings. I already have a small batch planted in the greenhouse bed and there are quite a few spares still to be planted out, so these will go on obelisks in the main garden beds. The batch in the Cutting Garden will be allowed to stay for as long as they are productive, but as soon as they start to run to seed I will take them out and use this support for late climbing beans. At either end of this bed I have planted batches of borage and dill started in the greenhouse in February.
The Cutting Garden beds were originally planned for vegetables, so within the Cutting Garden there are four permanent plantings: two beds of asparagus, one bed of autumn raspberries and one bed with a succession of strawberries. Above you can see the first spears of asparagus – this will be the fourth season for the asparagus beds so we can pick freely until mid June. The season does not officially begin until 1st May, so this is an early bonus for us.
Above is the strawberry bed in the Cutting Garden. I have a second bed where I grow the fruit bushes. The bed above has three varieties (I need to check the names) that should fruit in succession. I have weeded and feed it with fish, blood & bone this week. As the flowers are appearing on the early variety it is time to put a net over the hoops to protect the crop from bird damage.
The raspberries above are an autumn fruiting variety (Autumn Bliss I believe) and are planted in two rows. One row has been cut to the ground and is just starting to resprout. The row that you can see has been left standing and should produce an early crop in July. The canes that were cut to the ground will crop in September, hopefully giving me a summer of raspberries to look forward to (thank you Cathy!). It has just occurred to me that I should probably net this row of raspberries. The birds never seem to be attracted to the raspberries that ripen in September and October, but July is probably a different story. As I do not have a permanent cover for this bed a few net curtains thrown over the fruit should do the job.
This beautiful tulip is Jan Reus, the first of the dark crimson tulips to flower. I also grow this in the main garden where it repeats well.
These lovely ladies are Apricot Beauty, a single early variety. I have not grown this in my main beds but the single earlies tend to repeat well and it is such a beautiful colour that I think I will add it in the autumn.
Finally for today another view of tulip Apricot Impression cut at the weekend. These are photos that I took today of the stunning flowers that were arranged on Sunday. They are still looking beautiful, despite being on a hot sunny window ledge. I could not resist taking a few close ups!
With the tulips in full flow I now need to make sure that the follow-on flowers are ready in the wings. The sweet peas are already in place and the hardy annuals have been sown and I am now starting to plant them out. I will be sowing half hardy annuals in the greenhouse this month and I am laying out the dahlia tubers in trays on the greenhouse staging to chit. I am also planning to start direct sowing seeds of all the hardy annuals for a later crop.
On Sunday I will be posting photos of an arrangement from the Cutting Garden in ‘Flowers On Sunday’ and I will continue to post photos of the progress in the Cutting Garden as the season progresses.
For now I hope you are enjoying all images photos of tulips!
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your display today made me want to cry it was so beautiful……….your skills are to be wondered at ,thank you
Thank you so much Theresa – your comment made me teary too! I am glad you are enjoying the tulips.
Love the Jan Reus: I will have to try some next year. These are stunning photos, as usual!!!
Thank you Libby – is your climate good for tulips? Can you leave them in the ground to reflower next year as your summers are hot?
Rococo is one of my favs. Polka is great rasp. we now prefer it to our Autumn Bliss. Great photos 🙂
Thank you – I will have to investigate Polka – I have not heard of it before but do have a little bit of space that could be filled with a few more raspberries. I have been practicing tonight – I am on page 12 – Clair de lune & Blueberry Pie!
mmmm I like both Clair de lune and i like blueberry pie, so they sound like a nice combination. I think she has tweaked some of the pieces since I got my copy.
Julie,
Now Julie you should become a flower or vegetable farmer. You plan so well because your garden shows you have done your homework well.
Thank you Sajina – your comments are very kind and I do look forward to what you will say.
Super photos and Blue Diamond is lovely and I really like the idea of following the sweet peas with late beans. I grow both Autumn Bliss and Polka I like both but Polka is very slightly sweeter.
Thank you Julie – I am going to try Polka – it seems very popular.
I have tulips coming up in waves under my pear and apple trees – so beautiful that people are stopping to take photos which is rather nice. They’re from a £5 bag of supermarket bulbs – such a small investment for a lot of pleasure! I’m also in the middle of replacing some of autumn bliss with Polka raspberries and always leave a few canes for early fruiting – it’s a system that works! Love the close up photos of your tulips, stunning!
Thank you Caro – it is good to hear that double cropping works for you as well. Another vote for Polka – I am certainly missing something on the raspberry front!
Oh my so pretty:-) I have been so busy outside since it warmed up that I have done nothing but arrange brown. No time for reading blogs since I have been outside. Our daffodils are just poking throught the soil + are late this year. I put in more tulips last year, but can only put them in my backyard since the squirrels + chipmunks destroy ours. I have some tulips in my back which is where I have my dogs, so that may deter them a bit.
What a great idea to put a full bed with tulips. That is very wise + I never would of thought to do that. I usually had a few tuilips I would put in a vase. You have some great ideas for cutting gardens. I will have to follow your suggestons since you always have beautiful vases!
Thank you Robbie – I am glad you find this useful. I know what you mean about being busy – it is hard when the garden is in full flow to find time for the usual chores like laundry and food and then there is the blog to write and blogs to read – I am relieved that the light mornings are waking me up very early – I sometimes steal an hour at my computer before everyone else gets up.
but to tell you the truth, I am glad to have all the garden chores, it is so much better than SNOW-lol:-)
So beautiful Julie; what would life be without tulips. I always find that the tulips flower almost all at once here, the only ones that are a little later are usually the fringed ones although the purple fringed in the spring walk were one of the first to flower. I am a fan of Jan Reus, sadly mine are just finsihing as yours are beginning; it is a wonderful deep red, I bought it after seeing it at Chelsea. Mine are in their 3rd ot 4th year.
I would imagine with your warm and dry summers that most tulips repeat quite well – do you find some are better than others? I think without tulips it would be a life half lived! I get such a lot of pleasure from mine – spring is unimaginable without them.
I agree completely, tulips are such a wonderful part of spring. Yes, you’re correct they all repeat for me only the parrots are not so good in the second year if they flower at all.
I have no luck with parrots repeating either and often all I get is a few sorry looking leaves the following year. I have learnt to dig them all up after flowering – it is much tidier the following year.
I love all your tulips. Every year I wish that I had more. Jan Reus is stunning.
Thank you Chloris – I am glad you are enjoying them. This year I am getting double the pleasure as I have vases full of tulips in the house and beds full of them outside. I think we should all plant more tulips in the autumn!
My Mum would love your garden – you are a very neat gardener like her. Everything is so beautiful. The tulips remind me of Istanbul.
Your images are stunning, I agree with you, there can’t be too many tulips. Truely beautiful.