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Rare Bulb Highlights: Botanical & Historical Tulips
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There are so many exciting bulbs available for fall shipping or pick-up through our Rare Bulb offerings that we thought we should introduce you to some of the many highlights between now and the fall.
In this instalment we highlight our botanical and historical tulips. These wonderful bulbs are intriguing versions of the world's most popular bulb. The botanical tulips are perennials good for naturalizing and come in amazing forms and colours. The historical tulips have amazing broken patterns and can also be maintained in the long term if grown in good, sunny conditions. Learn more below. Enjoy!
Our mail order site is now fully updated with all kinds of crazy and fantastic botanical bulbacious wonders, most of which you won't find anywhere else in Canada. Both local and mail order customers can place orders there for pick-up or shipping in the fall.
Cheers, Gary and the Phoenicians
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Tulipa acuminata
has narrow, wild, twisting yellow petals tipped with scarlet as if in flame. It's available as part of our Rare Bulb offerings and is hardy to zone 3!
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Help Us Spread the Word
In order for Phoenix Perennials to continue doing everything we do, including bringing you a candy store of delectable plants, we need to keep reaching new people. Please forward this email to your gardening friends and family. Better yet, bring them with you on a trip to Phoenix Perennials! We also do mail order so please help us spread the word across Canada! Thanks so much for your help!
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Rare Bulb Highlights
Botanical and Historical Tulips
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We are very excited to offer an amazing selection of 37 different rare botanical and historical tulips for pre-ordering now followed by pick-up or shipping in the fall.
Botanical Tulips
: Before the Dutch discovered them and long before there were Darwin tulips, Triumph tulips, parrot tulips and bouquet tulips, fringed and lily-flowering tulips, peony-types and viridifloras, French and Kaufmanniana tulips and all of the other large, bold and colourful hybrids, there were the species -- those small, beguiling denizens of southern Europe and Asia Minor with an allure and beauty all their own.
Botanical tulips are what tulips used to look like and still look like in the wild. They are smaller in bulb size, height and flower size than your standard spring tulips but they are just as colourful and perhaps a little bit more sophisticated. They look more like sparkling jewels than a big brash boisterous flower.
Botanical tulips also offer something that the big hybrid tulips don't: STAYING POWER. Whereas the hybrids will last for a single year, maybe two, the botanical tulips are perennial. They will return year after year if they are planted in hot, sunny spots and in free-draining soil and will usually multiply with each passing season. Consequently, they are great for naturalizing. They also work well at the front of the border and in pots.
Historical Tulips
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The chief stars/culprits of the Dutch Tulipmania of the 1600s and the focus of so much speculation and desire were the Broken Tulips. These rare forms possesed unique feathers, flares, striping and spots with every flower being different. It was not discovered until the 1920s that these exquisite patterns were due to the presence of tulip breaking virus - a virus that is present today in all regions where tulips are grown - which caused the pigmentation on an otherwise solid-coloured tulip to break into the patterns so desired by collectors. In most cases this virus also caused a bulb to lose vigour over time and to eventually fizzle out.
However, in some historic varieties such as 'Absalon', introduced in 1780, the virus seems to cause the colour breaking but is otherwise benign not causing any other ill effects on the bulb. The other two varieties of Broken Tulips in our offerings -- 'Insulinde' and 'Columbine' -- were introduced in the early 20th century and also show great vigour.
You can
read more about historical tulips here
.
Here are some of the different tulips available for ordering now.
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A Few of our Botanical Tulips
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Tulipa acuminata has narrow, wild, twisting yellow petals tipped with scarlet as if in flame.
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Tulipa 'Norah' is a bold and beautiful botanical tulip with glowing deep pink flowers with pointed petals and blue and black bases.
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Tulipa 'Lizzy' is a striking cultivar with long, pointed, bright red petals flaring from black bases.
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Tulipa batalinii 'Salmon Gem' (syn. 'Salmon Jewel') has salmon pink buds opening to glowing salmon orange flowers.
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Tulipa humilis 'Lilliput' is a petite botanical tulip with bright, rounded red buds that open to reveal blue centres. The leaves are narrow and blue green.
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Tulipa humilis 'Alba Coerulea Oculata' is a rare and beautiful selection with pure white flowers with stelly navy blue centres.
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Tulipa clusiana Tubergen's Gem' is a long stemmed botanical tulip with pointed petals in striking red and yellow.
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Tulipa 'Absalon' introduced in 1780 is richly coloured with feathers, flames or marbles of burgundy-brown and yellow.
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Tulipa 'Columbine' introduced in 1929 is richly coloured with feathers, flames or marbles of purple on lavender with white.
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Tulipa 'Insulinde' introduced before 1915 transforms in colour and form from yellow and rose to purple-burgundy and white.
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Rare Spring Bulbs
265 Superlative Bulbs, Rhizomes, and Corms
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Bulbs represent an extraordinary opportunity to layer in extra colour, dynamism, and drama into your perennial borders and containers. They come in a diverse range of colours, shapes, and sizes and there is a bulb for nearly every garden situation. Bulbs are also very easy to care for. Just dig a hole and drop them in. You're done! Now prepare for years of beauty and colour.
We are very excited to offer 265 different rare and unusual bulbs, rhizomes and corms this fall up from 200 last year! There are many new treasures to be discovered!
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Visit the
Rare Bulb Pre-Order
on our Phoenix Perennials Mail Order Site to see our full selection. Both mail order and local customers should place their orders through our mail order system. Local customers should select the pick-up option when checking out. Quantities are limited. Please order early to secure your favourites as many bulbs sold out in advance last year.
Our selection of rare bulbs will ship or be ready for pick-up in mid to late September, depending on when they arrive from Europe.
Local Customers
: Choose "pick up" when you check out. We will send you an email when it's time to come in. Please place separate orders for bulbs and Cypripedium as this makes administering your orders easier. Please don't place orders for plants. They should all be ready now. You can always call or email first to enquire before you come in.
Mail Order Customers
: Please do not place orders mixing plants, bulbs or Cypripedium, unless you're placing an order for mixed plants and bulbs after Sept 15 or mixed plants, bulbs, and/or Cypripedium after October 1st. Otherwise, each of these categories will ship separately to arrive to you as fresh as possible for immediate planting and best establishment before winter. In summer and fall, plants are already grown and can't be held for more than a short period. They must ship when orders are placed. Bulbs ship in mid to late September. Cypripedium ship in mid October. If you place an order mixing these categories, we will need to arrange multiple shipments and recalculate your shipping costs.
A Note on Shipping Costs
: Unlike other mail order nurseries that ship fairly uniform products such as just bulbs or just bulbs and bareroot bagged perennials, we ship a very large range of products in a very large range of sizes. This makes it difficult to tweak our shopping cart system to give proper shipping cost estimates for all types of orders. We have left our system configured to estimate shipments containing plants which is the most costly type of item to ship and the most important for us to get right. However, this means that our system will sometimes over estimate the cost of shipping bulbs and Cypripedium. We will be re-evaluating all shipping costs for bulbs after shipping and adjust your shipping costs downwards should there be a discrepancy. Our goal is only to cover our costs in shipping, not to make money. Thanks for your understanding.
Ordering
: Visit the
Rare Bulb Pre-Order
on our Phoenix Perennials Mail Order Site to start shopping! The minimum order value to place a pre-order for mail order or pick-up is $40.
Have fun!
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Cypripedium
Lady's Slipper Orchids
40 Amazing Hybrids and Species
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We are excited to offer a diverse selection of hardy lady's slipper orchids for Canadian gardens. The majority of our offerings are Cypripedium hybrids which possess hybrid vigour -- they have inherited the best traits of both parents -- and are much easier to grow than species orchids, have beautiful flowers in amazing colours, and clump up very quickly into amazing displays in the part shade garden. In fact, in optimum conditions they should double in size every year! They come into bloom from late April through June offering an exquisite show in the garden.
This year we have added a selection of some of the best and most interesting Cypripedium species. Once you've gotten some practice growing the hybrids these plants are a wonderful way to continue your love affair with lady's slipper orchids. Keep in mind though that species orchids are more exacting in their requirements and that you should do research on how to care for them.
Most of our hybrid Cypripedium are "officially" hardy to zone 4 while some are hardy to zone 3 and even zone 2! Even the zone 4 plants may be hardy in protected spots in zone 3 with mulch and good snow cover as we are still learning about the hardiness of the different hybrids. Indeed, we have customers in Alberta and Saskatchewan who are growing these Cypripedium outdoors with great success.
We are currently offering
40 different lady's slipper orchids
for shipping to our mail order customers and for pick-up at Phoenix by our local customers in mid October 2017. All are top quality, blooming size, many with multiple eyes, and should flower in the spring. Here they are:
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Ordering
: Visit the
Cypripedium Pre-Order
to peruse and make your selections. All of our Cypripedium are top quality, blooming-size plants often with multiple eyes sourced from the best growers in Europe and provided to you bare root. October is the best time to buy and plant Cypripedium directly into the ground and the only time we will ship them. The largest rhizomes are selected to fill fall mail orders and pick-up orders. The remaining unsold rhizomes are potted up for spring sales on site at Phoenix.
Local Customers
: Choose "pick up" when you check out. We will send you an email when it's time to come in. Please place separate orders for bulbs and Cypripedium as this makes administering your orders easier. Please don't place orders for plants. They should all be ready now. You can always call or email first to enquire before you come in.
Mail Order Customers
: Please do not place orders mixing plants, bulbs or Cypripedium, unless you're placing an order for mixed plants and bulbs after Sept 15 or mixed plants, bulbs, and/or Cypripedium after October 1st. Otherwise, each of these categories will ship separately to arrive to you as fresh as possible for immediate planting and best establishment before winter. In summer and fall, plants are already grown and can't be held for more than a short period. They must ship when orders are placed. Bulbs ship in mid to late September. Cypripedium ship in mid October. If you place an order mixing these categories, we will need to arrange multiple shipments and recalculate your shipping costs.
A Note on Shipping Costs
: Unlike other mail order nurseries that ship fairly uniform products such as just bulbs or just bulbs and bareroot bagged perennials, we ship a very large range of products in a very large range of sizes. This makes it difficult to tweak our shopping cart system to give proper shipping cost estimates for all types of orders. We have left our system configured to estimate shipments containing plants which is the most costly type of item to ship and the most important for us to get right. However, this means that our system will sometimes over estimate the cost of shipping bulbs and Cypripedium. We will be re-evaluating all shipping costs for bulbs and Cyps after shipping and adjust your shipping costs downwards should there be a discrepancy. Our goal is only to cover our costs in shipping, not to make money. Thanks for your understanding.
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