There's no such thing as too many tulips in Carl Neels' University Park garden. For 30 years he's tucked thousands of bulbs into the earth, following a plan mapped in his imagination to create clusters of compatible colors for about six glorious weeks. And while he could assign the back-breaking task to his retinue of employees, Mr. Neels, a garden designer, prefers to plant each and every tulip bulb himself.
"I first did this when I was about 5 years old. My mother gave me some tulip bulbs," says Mr. Neels, a native of Baltimore. Ever since, he's been modeling his tulip displays after the annual spring show he admired as a boy at Sherwood Gardens, a five-acre public space in his hometown.
Mr. Neels, owner of Country Life Landscaping ( www.countrylife-usa.com), has worked out a scheme where, by planting early tulips, Darwin hybrids and late-blooming singles in the same hole, so to speak, he extends his display longer than if he planted, say, just as many bulbs but all of the same kind. He plants about 35 tulips each of the three blooming periods, all in similar colors. These carefully placed clusters of pink, yellow, red, orange, white and purple tulips add up to 5,000 bulbs. Annually. (In colder climates, tulips may return to bloom another spring. In North Texas, the leaves may reappear but rarely does the plant re-bloom.)
Because he does not expect his tulips to return, Mr. Neels does not take the pains he would with other perennials. He does not distribute bone meal or any other fertilizer at planting time; that spring's flowers already are formed within the bulb. He plants them with only two inches of soil above the bulb's tip, whereas bulbs of the same size that perennialize should be planted deeper.
Mr. Neels has another tulip- related practice that flies in the face of Dallas-area gardeners' habits. He places his bulb order in June, not waiting until late December to sift through leftovers at garden centers. But he buys so many bulbs to fill the dreams-of-spring plans of his landscape customers and his own plot – 110,000 bulbs for this year – he deals directly with a bulb broker, who puts his request up for auction among Holland growers to get the best price.
Although most home gardeners can't meet the minimum order of a bulb broker, we can capitalize on the early bird maxim, Mr. Neels says, by buying tulips as soon as local garden centers stock them or by ordering from mail-order suppliers during the summer. Mail-order companies, he explains, hold your bulbs in refrigeration until it's time to plant them in our agricultural zones 7 (north of LBJ Freeway) and 8 (south of LBJ).
For his celebrity customer in England, however, there's no worrying over when to plant, what to plant or how to plant. The tulip bulbs Mr. Neels sends to Prince Charles, whom he met through the late Rosemary Verey, the Prince of Wales' garden designer, are tucked into a meadow at Highgrove, near Cirencester, that is meant to look wild the year 'round. And in England, the show just gets better every year.
E-mail magreene@dallasnews.com
Follow Carl Neels' advice to avoid common mistakes made with tulips:
Tulips should be stored at about 45 F. Many refrigerators are colder than that, causing the bulbs to develop at a faster rate once planted and risking the flowers freezing. On the other hand, if the bulbs are not chilled once you bring them home, the heat can cause them to "come up blind," a condition where the leaves develop but the plant does not bloom.
Plant bulbs between Christmas and mid-January. Plant earlier and blooms risk being frozen in January, when Dallas usually has its deepest cold. Flower buds can survive into the mid-20s. If we have an unseasonably warm spell between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the flower's stem may not develop properly, causing "blasting," where the flower blooms inside the sheath of leaves.NORTH TEXAS FAVES
To copy Carl Neels' strategy, put several bulbs from each of these categories in the same hole. He carefully follows a plan to keep colors complementary at different bloom times, but that's an individual choice. This tactic can extend your tulip display up to six weeks. His suggestions are listed in order of bloom time.
Early
Christmas Dream (single, carmine rose/white base)
Abba (double tomato red)
Monte Carlo (double yellow)
Diana (single white)
Triumph
Golden Melody (buttercup yellow)
White Dream (white)
Attila (lavender)
Darwin hybrid
Daydream (apricot)
Red Impression (ruby red)
World's Favorite (red/yellow)
Single late
Batavia (rose/orange)
Dordogne (tangerine flushed with rose)
Kingsblood (cherry red)
Muscadet (yellow)
Mrs. John T. Scheepers (yellow)
Menton (rose pink)
Cum Laude (lavender)
Blue Amiable (lavender)
Maureen (marble white)
Parrot
Flaming Parrot (bright yellow/red)
Estella Rijnveld (red/white)
Red Champion (deep red)
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