Tulip blends color your spring

Tulips are still planted pretty much as they have always been, in blocks of single colors. There is nothing wrong with that approach, but today there is a new and much more interesting alternative: tulip blends. For the same price you would pay for 100 red or yellow tulips, you can get a blend of two or even three varieties that is guaranteed to change the way you think about one of the world's most iconic flowers.

Blends are not mixes of seconds and leftovers; they are carefully coordinated combinations of large, healthy bulbs. The colors, flower shapes and stem heights are selected to complement or harmonize with one another, and bloom is coordinated to produce either a single crescendo of color or a rolling display, with the flowers opening in waves.

The pioneer and leader in the tulip blend market is a company in Connecticut named Colorblends. Tim Schipper, the company's founder and owner, came up with the idea more than 20 years ago, and business has grown rapidly ever since. "Combining tulips seems easy," he says, "but it's not. We go to a lot of trouble to create successful displays. In the fall, we blend the bulbs and ship them in bags of 100. All the customer has to do is plant the bulbs upon receipt and enjoy the show in the spring."

What makes combining tulips so hard? The sheer diversity of tulips is a big part of the answer. There are hundreds of varieties in cultivation. They come in a wide range of shapes and sizes and in almost every color you can think of, except blue and black. Tulips are divided into 14 groups, which should in theory aid in the development of blend recipes, but putting like with like doesn't necessarily give the desired result. "You make an educated guess," Schipper says. "Then you have to plant the bulbs to see if it really works. We plant dozens of ideas every fall and only a few make the grade. It's a time-consuming process of trial and error."

The cost of the bulbs adds another layer of complexity to the blend-making puzzle. "Colorblends is in the business of selling bulbs at wholesale prices," says Schipper. "There are some incredibly beautiful tulips in the Netherlands and it would be great to be able to choose any one we wanted to make blends, but many of them are expensive. We have to be price-conscious because our customers are price-conscious. We can push the envelope here and there, but we must deliver value for the dollar."

For the price of 100 red tulips, you can get a warm blend of red, orange and yellow; a cool blend of purple, pink and white; or a fruity blend of salmon and mauve. Whatever your taste, whatever your mood, there is a blend to express it.

"Blending takes tulips to a whole new level, without breaking the bank," says Schipper. "You don't have to be a high roller to have a car-stopping spring display."