Whopper pots in spring bloom - boiled sweet palette

Whopper Pots in Spring Bloom - Boiled Sweet Palette

In this lesson, I'm going to show you how we use the boiled sweet palette in our Dutch yard. This is essentially a pot garden where I use mainly zinc pots in all shapes and sizes.

Zinc pots are quite muted pots which give the flowers room to shine. If you have highly decorated pots then you run the risk of your garden getting a bit noisy or your pots working in competition with your flowers.

You have to be careful when using the boiled sweet palette as all of the colours are so bright and strong. If you mix too many of them in one pot then things can quickly become too much. So in the Dutch yard, I have stuck to a bride, bridesmaid and gatecrasher recipe but I have put them in separate pots.

Boiled Sweet Recipe for the Dutch Yard

Bride

Tulip 'Orca'

Bridesmaid

Tulip 'Campbell'

Gatecrasher

Tulip 'Virichic'

The Other Tulips in This Collection Are:

• Tulip 'Ballerina'
• Tulip 'Queen Jewel'

Orca is a double tulip or peony variety. These varieties are particularly good for growing in containers because they are sterile and so can't ever be fertilised. This means that the tulip will remain in flower and will often retain its petals for twice as long as a regular tulip.

Campbell is another double variety that is also very elegant and highly scented. It's a brand new variety too, and I think it's going to be very popular.

Planting Pot Toppers

In the past, I used to plant out the tulip bulbs in November and then wait for them to come up in the spring. This meant that for many months I was looking at empty pots, which isn't very inspiring.

After several years, I decided to start planting into the tops of my pots and I began doing this with salads and herbs such as mizuna and flat-leaf parsley, which are frost-hardy. I then moved on to flowering hardy annuals too, such as Ammi visnaga, which has beautiful fern-like foliage.

I also plant wallflowers, and these can be in colours that will complement your tulips.

Potential Pot Toppers

FLOWERING

• Ammi visnaga
• Cornflowers
• Salvias
• Scabious
• Violas
• Wallflowers

EDIBLE

• Mizuna
• Flat leaf parsley

Arranging Pots with a Variety of Sizes and Textures

When it comes to arranging your pots, place your smaller pots at the front and plant any densely coloured tulips in them. Your taller and more ethereal plants should go towards the back. Other things to consider are scale, texture and size.