Tulips are the stars of the garden now, but they need a supporting cast
Most people regard Tulip Fever as a thing of the past, a 17th-century aberration from a time when tulip bulbs were the hottest commodity around. I still get tulip fever at this time of year — a heady combination of spotting my first tulips in the garden and the arrival of my bulb catalogue. With so many types of tulips available (lily-flowered, peony-flowered, parrot, 'Viridiflora', etc) in so many beautiful colours, I find them very hard to resist, but with the key to their beauty often directly related to repeating one form en masse, I find I have to exercise a certain level of self-control.
