As this mild (but wet here) spell of weather continues, there is something new to see every day and the bulbs are popping through the ground at an amazing rate. One day the tulips hardly seem to be visible through the soil and the next the flowers are open. Well, maybe not quite the next day but not far off. These tulips were green buds last week but were just about fully out yesterday.

I like tulips for lots of reasons but the sheer variety is one, and the way the flowers develop and change as they age is another.

The Fosteriana tulips are not the most popular and there is a rather restricted colour range but they have their charms. Firstly there is the size of the flowers, if that can be a charm. They have the largest flowers of any of the groups and this species was crossed with taller tulips to create the ‘Darwin Hybrid’ section, giving them their vigour and huge blooms. In the red Fosterianas the buds, when fully coloured, look rather like tinned, plum tomatoes. The flowers are definitely elongated and the tepal tips rather blunt. When they are fully formed the closed flowers are rather less bulbous and when open the blooms are huge, almost 20cm across. I tend to like these for their impact rather than nuances in their colouring and where you need a big splash of uncompromising colour these are the tulips to choose.

Like all tulips these need full sun and well drained soil and they are generally ‘lasters’, coming up year after year in most gardens. ‘Pirand’ is a relatively new variety, introduced in 1995, being a sport of ‘Pinkeen’. I am not sure why I chose this one for planting because it now reminds me of ‘Sweetheart’ the white-edged yellow Fosteriana – one that I have never been keen on because the white edges remind me of scorching. But it is certainly bright and everyone comments on it – favourably – because you just can’t ignore it.

fosteriana tulips, tulip pirand, tulip sweetheart, tulipa fosteriana