Yesterday the Denton County Master Gardeners Association visited the Texas-Tulips Field. There were over 80 of us! We first listened to the owner tell the story of how he and his family came to the Dallas area from The Netherlands. We also learned how to grow tulips in this area of Texas.
The tulip field was so beautiful. Bill & I had visited it last year when Aunt June was here for a brief visit. But each year is a totally new experience, as there are over 90 varieties planted and they replant the whole field each year with new, different varieties.
I learned that growing tulips here is quite a process. For the homeowner, if you want to save your tulips from year to year, you have to first wait about 6 weeks after the blooms die away to dig the 
bulbs up. Then you keep them warm and dry (about 70 degrees) until early-to-mid September. Then you refrigerate them for 6 weeks. THEN you plant them. If you don’t do this process, the likelihood is very high that the bulbs will not bloom again the next year. Your other option is to just buy new tulip bulbs each fall to refrigerate and then plant.
It all sounds expensive and/or labor/time intensive to me. So I’ve decided to forgo growing tulips in Texas and just plan to visit Texas-Tulips each spring!
As usual, I took a lot of pictures!
Maybe you can tell – I love the centers of the flowers as much as, if not more than, the outsides of the tulips. There were also a lot of bees busy pollinating the tulips. I wonder if tulip honey is extra sweet?
It was a very breezy day (when isn’t it?), plus the tulips were definitely following the sunshine. Here’s standing on the west side of the row:
And here’s standing on the east side:
I think this may be my favorite picture:
Or maybe this one?
Which do you think? Yellow? Or Pink?
I didn’t realize tulips follow the sun like sunflowers do. Neat observation.
I agree that planting them seems like a lot more hassle than somewhere with a cold season. They sure are pretty, though.
Such beautiful flowers. I didn’t know there were so many different looks to them. I usually think of solid colors and the cup shape. I do have a few I call sherbet color combinations.