A celebration of tulips from seeds to flowers featuring beautiful artwork and designs that are tulip-inspired.

1. Tiptoeing through the Tulips
Lessons learned in the gardens of life

2. As long as there is springtime, there will be tulips

3. A tulip’s story begins in autumn
• No one but the gardener is
thinking about tulips
• Budgeting
• Planning the garden
• Tulips need lots of spring sunshine
• Soil mix tulips prefer
• Rich and loamy
• Drains well
• Shopping for bulbs
• Planting the bulbs 6 inches deep

4. • Unless it’s the tulip grower
• Growing time: 4-6 years from seed to
flower
• Before blooming, a tulip
• Spends 18 months in a cold frame
• 2-4 years in a garden bed or field
• Tulip bulbs are sold when they’re ready
to flower.

5. Choosing Your Preferred Variety of Tulips
• Type of flower
• Single
• Double
• Cupped
• Lily-form
• Star
• Egg/Pointed Oval
• Fringed
• Parrot
• Stem Height
• Tall
• Medium
• Short
• Diminutive
• Period of Bloom
• Early
• Late
• Formal vs. Informal
• Hybrids
• Naturalizing
• Species

6. Varietal Names to Look For
• Darwin
• The best of the hybrid tulips
• Triumph
• Come in a wide variety of colors
with a long vase-life
• Peony
• Another name for double
• Crispa
• Another name for fringed
• Fosteriana or Emperor
• Short stems with large showy
flowers
• Greigeii or Turkestan
• Maroon streaked foliage
• Kaufmanianna
• Lily-form with contrasting edges
• French
• Another name for egg-shaped or
pointed oval
• Viridiflora
• Streak of green on every petal
• Rembrandt or Broken
• Flaming streaks of purple or red

7. Tulips need a long cold winter to bloom in spring.
In warmer zones, gardeners winter their
tulip bulbs in the fridge.

8. With the first warm days of spring, flowering bulbs swell.
Green shoots push their way up through the damp earth, reaching for the sun.

9. Just when our patience is about to run out, the earliest tulips bloom
Naturalizing and species tulips: short-stemmed, fast-growing,
bloom year after year where they were first planted,
giving them an early edge over their leggier competitors

10. And then a riot of color bursts forth

11. The Bible doesn’t mention tulips by name,
but this passage still seems to apply
Matthew 6:28-30 (NLT)
…Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon
in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers
that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you…

12. Lessons learned
from tulips
• Beautiful spring gardens take planning and
effort to achieve
• Beauty sometimes comes in smaller packages
and on shorter stems
• Plant a mix of tulip varieties to extend their
season of bloom
• Healthy beautiful tulips thrive in light sandy soil
mixed with rich humus
• Hard winters produce the loveliest spring
flowers

13. Tulips create beautiful artwork and designs

14. Biography
• Author and artist Krystine Kercher has
had a love affair with flowers and
gardening since she was a preschooler
learning to plant marigold seeds with her
mother.
• Since 2009 she has enjoyed
photographing live flowers in her yard
and at parks and nature centers near
Lincoln, Nebraska.
• She also takes floral photos and turns
them into art that she sells online.
Celebrate a spring birthday with tulips
Shop more beautiful tulip designs at
www.ContraryMarket.com

15. Come tiptoethrough the tulips
with me