Hybrid Tulips that naturalise?

Hello all, Gardeners are nice people!

I have just finished a major restructuring of our garden and the borders are new. I would like to underplant using daffs and tulips. Daffs no problem. I've grown tulips before.
I want to use hybrid tulips. I am pretty familiar with the options in the Parkers Bulb catalogue, but there is information I need first.

Having grown tulips, I know there are those that show up for a few years and then go missing.
Firstly, I am looking for longevity - "naturalizing" tulips - but hybrid.
Google does not understand. It thinks I want the species tulips which are tiny and limited.
I have had tulips that last for a decade - I had one, as red as a Buckingham Palace Guardsman, but the variety is forgotten.
This time, I conjure, fancy types too, all sorts of hybrids - hundreds of them, some in straight borders, others between rhododendrons. If I can, I am keen on the idea of having red and white tulips in a mixed planting for some areas. The problem I have found in the past, is that if you get the wrong varieties they can flower out of such with each other by a week or even more.

So, tulip lovers, any gems? Thank you all.

Z

 

All tulips, like many other bulbs, will vary in flowering time as it isn't an exact science, and many will vary due to your location and general climate/conditions.
The red one may have been something like Apeldoorn which can last a fair time, and there's a yellow variety too. There's also a short type called Red Riding Hood which has quite distinctive spotted foliage and is bright red. I've grown both of those reds, but they're still short lived here, andm any smaller bulbs also get taken by squirrels as they're planted less deeply and are moerer accessible to them.
Personally, I'd forget planting tulips between rhodos because they like very different conditions, and would be unlikely to thrive.
The botanical/species tulips are certainly longer lived, but are earlier than the more common types available. Most are brighter in colour and smaller, but I grew a taller one called Fusilier which did well for a few years.
It's better to go to a specialist supplier like Peter Nyssen, Avon, Broadleigh or similar, to see what's available, but your conditions will dictate how long any tulips last, and many won't appear reliably year on year for long spells.

 

Use “perennial tulips” as your search term as that’s the phrase nurseries and garden writers often use for ones which are more reliable at returning. Note the term return, I don’t think any of the hybrids will naturalise.

Sarah Raven website specifies against each variety whether it’s perennial so good for research and of course you don’t need to then buy them from that site.

As said Appledoorn is very reliable, from memory the Van Eijk cultivars are also good returners also Parade. For whites Purissima, Spring Green are reliable. But reliability is very dependant on weather and site conditions - these will also effect the flowering times so like all plant combinations some years they may be perfectly in sync (or successional is desired) and some years not.

In my garden, I rarely get more than 2 years from tulip bulbs in the ground, the exception is Queen of the Night which was planted by the previous owner and theyve flowered every year since we moved in (8 years) but they have gradually reduced in number and size. They are planted close to the trunk of a walnut tree on the south facing side so get full sun over winter, when the canopy is open and it’s very dry. The challenge you will have placing them amongst evergreens is increasing shade as the shrubs grow and mature.

 

Great answer thank you. I have ordered

 

There's a clump of what I think are Apeldoorn (red, black centre with a yellow outline) in my parents' garden that was planted by the previous owner. Parents bought the house in 1965 so those tulips are 60 years old (not much more than that though because the house was only built in about 1962).
There's a clump of yellow ones there too, same age but not so easy to put a name to. Could be Golden Apeldoorn.

 

+1 for 'Queen of the Night'. It's the only one in my garden that has reliably re-flowered and even increased from bulblets for the last 14 years.

 

I can't keep Q. of Night going more than a year or two here @noisette47 . Very few of them will do more than a couple of years in the climate here, and you only get a few of them re-flowering at best. Ronaldo is a nice variety of purple, but it isn't much better. I think I had one flower this spring - they'd been in the bed a couple of years. I generally treat all those types as annuals.

It's just too wet for them. I'd have to build a raised bed and pretty much fill it with grit/gravel and very little soil to try and give them a chance. I've experimented with some in pots - keeping them undercover over the bulk of winter, and then bringing them out, still sheltered, once it's nearer their growing/flowering time. That's worked a bit better, but I've only done it in the last couple of years. I'll see how those ones fare this spring.

 

Like @noisette47 I've had Queen of the Night for 10 to 15 years and find it reliably flowers. It wanders around a bit though. I've also got White Triumphator which behaves in a similar manner.

 

Some of the lily flowered tulips repeat flower here in my sandy soil, particularly Ballerina.

 

I cant remember what these are but they have been coming up and flowering for probably nearly 40 yrs, they do increase slowly.


I have a feeling they started out like this one and reverted.

 

They're Apeldoorns @pete
The 'usual' ones are red and yellow, which are the most reliably perennial colours, but there are variations too.

 

Thanks that name does ring a bell.

 

Thank you all.
Z