Go with a Flow

For many people, their biggest befuddlement is trying to select a tulip blend for their yard. Well, I’ve got a solution: Try multiple blends. Combining more than one is a blast. You become an artist and the whole neighborhood shares the pleasure. That’s what Colorblends does at their Spring Garden and I can attest firsthand: Making several blends flow is major fun. Plus, The Garden also proves that you don’t need a whole lot of real estate to stage this thriller. A few square feet are all it takes.

The Starting Point

Here’s one secret to success when mingling more than one blend: Select a shared color to “talk” between them. This year, The Garden featured blends all with white as part of their display for a common theme. It worked like a charm. Even though each blend has a different personality and several different colors, the white factor brings them together. Using the white common denominator, you can couple Zephyr with Four-Star.

There is a critical factor to make this work: If you want several blends to coincide, be sure select ones that bloom at the same time. Don’t worry; Colorblends has you covered. They’ve done their homework on timeframes. In the catalog, they make synchronizing easy by keying out early, midseason, and late performing blends.

Color Conversations

White is the easiest place to start, but you could become more daring. Yellow is a vibrant, cheerful hue that is worked into many blends. Use that shared color to make blends intersect. At The Garden, Pink Margarita was planted beside Tukano. The yellows in both make them speak the same language. Want to push the envelope into even more daring realms? Go bravely into bright colors. Flairs and stripes of different shades in tulip petals also give you a motif for creativity. Big blocks of color please your eye, making moving through the rainbow a cinch. PS: The Colorblends catalog often groups similar colors side by side on its pages. Flip through, and harvest ideas for your personal style.

Playing the Field

Want to really go bananas? Bring other spring bloomers into the brew. At The Garden, several late-blooming daffodils are still happening when the tulips are high prime. Pull them together! I noted a marriage between Tulip Best Red-Yellow and Daffodil Blend Starry Night and it was a great union of a sizzling flame-colored tulip with white daffodils threading through. But take the opportunity to be adventurous. White and orange Joyce Spirit daffodil is blooming near Tukano parrot tulip blend and they are a match made in heaven. See what I mean? Mixing and matching Colorblends brings the genius to another level.

 

 

 

About the Author

Author, garden writer, lecturer, blogger, and photographer Tovah Martin has spent decades working with and writing about bulbs. An honorary member of the Garden Club of America, her most recent book, The Garden in Every Sense and Season, was awarded the Gold Medal from GardenComm. A fanatical hands-on organic gardener outdoors and inside, she digs into Furthermore, her own 7-acre Connecticut farmstead.