The best red tulip ever? Could be! It’s definitely the only tulip this old that’s still widely grown today. Generations have prized its rich color – red with a plum blush – and its fine habit – sturdy, weather-proof, and enduring. Isn’t it time you tried it? Triumph, 12”, zones 3-7S/8WC, from Holland. Chart to compare.

How about a tulip that’s immortal? Our customers led us to ‘Demeter’, telling us it returned and bloomed in their gardens for a decade or more. A vibrant, very rosy purple, it’s named for Demeter (say Di-MEET-er), the Greek goddess of agriculture and fertility – another good reason to grow it. Triumph, 24”, zones 3-7S/8WC, from Holland. Chart to compare.

Wonderfully fragrant, tall, and late, ‘Dillenburg’ blooms with the earliest iris, offering one last spring treat to look forward to each year. It’s a sophisticated “art shades” blend of peach brushed with rose and one of the last survivors of a whole class of tulips, the Dutch Breeders, that once filled pages of catalogs in the early 1900s. Single Late, 26”, zones 3-7S/8WC, from one last Dutch farmer. Chart to compare. Although we hope to offer this rarity again in 2013, availability may not be confirmed until June. Please check back then or subscribe to our email newsletter for an alert.

If we had to choose a dozen landmark varieties to summarize the whole amazing history of tulips, this 400-year-old miniature would be one of them. Just 6 inches tall and extra early blooming, ‘Red and Yellow’ is the grandaddy of the ‘Duc van Tols’, a fabled clan of pixie tulips once grown in every garden and forced for Christmas bloom. In front of purple hyacinths, its tiny flames are stunning. 6”, zones 4b-7, from the Hortus. Chart to compare.

Short, sweet, and extra-early, the ‘Duc van Tols’ grew in every stylish garden from about 1600 to 1900. But then tall, late tulips came into vogue, and the ‘Ducs’ all but vanished. Perfect little miniatures, they’re the earliest traditional garden tulips to bloom each spring. Elizabethan ‘Rose’ is our favorite, an innocent white that’s blushed with a little more pink every day it’s open. 5-7”, zones 4b-7/8WC, from the Hortus Bulborum. Chart to compare.

Here’s a vanilla that’s far from plain – and deliciously fragrant! An ancestor of today’s lily-flowered tulips, it’s a creamy, golden ivory, vase-shaped beauty with long slender petals that twist and reflex gently for an almost whirling effect. Aka ‘White Crown’, Cottage/Lily-flowered, 16”, zones 4-7S/8WC from the Hortus Bulborum. Chart to compare.

With its almost savage beauty, this bright, dagger-petaled tulip was listed as a wild species in 19th-century catalogs. But its never been found in the wild and may be a survivor from the early 1700s when tulips much like it (and T. acuminata) ruled in the lavish gardens of the Ottoman Empire. Whatever its origins, it’s spectacular! Lily-flowered, 16”, zones 4-7S/8WC, from the Hortus Bulborum. Chart to compare.

“Like raspberry-ripple ice-cream,” says Anna Pavord in The Tulip, and “one of the best.” It’s also one of the most dramatic of modern parrots, with a whirling-dervish intensity that rivals that of 18th-century parrots such as ‘Amiral de Constantinople’. I first grew ‘Estella’ 25 years ago, and the outrageous beauty of its first blooms still blazes in my memory. Parrot, 18-20”, zones 3-7S/8WC, from Holland. Chart to compare.

A sport of the great ‘Clara Butt’, ‘Fantasy’ was a groundbreaking tulip — a pastel parrot whose beauty and strong stems brought parrots back into vogue after decades of being scorned as garish oddities. Wonderfully ruffled and frilled, it’s a rich shell-pink with flickerings of cream and apple-green. Vita Sackville-West, who confessed to a “weakness” for parrots “in their tatterdermalion rags,” grew it at Sissinghurst. Parrot, 20-22”, zones 3-7S/8WC, from Holland. Chart to compare.

Violet-scented and informal, this charming wildflower has small, yellow, almond-shaped flowers that nod in bud and then open wide in the sun. Gerard pictured it in his great Herbal of 1597, Jefferson grew it at Monticello, and you’ll find it naturalized today throughout Pennsylvania Dutch country — and our garden. Aka T. florentina, 8-14”, zones 5-8aS/8WC, from Holland. Chart to compare.