Tulipa Princesse Charmante

Tulipa 'Princesse Charmante' is a low-growing variety, with large, vibrant red-orange flowers, which open up into wide satin-like corollas on a beautiful grey-green foliage marbled with brown-purple. This flower is not only beautiful but also fragrant, making it one of the first choices for the garden. It will be excellent in flower beds and provide splashes of colour in rockeries and containers. It proves to be robust and reliable, resistant to drought, and low-maintenance, coming back every year. Plant it near your front door, and it will welcome you with fragrance!

The 'Princesse Charmante' Greigii Botanical Tulip belongs to the Liliaceae family; it is a Dutch horticultural creation from 1965. The species Tulipa greigii was the first to be cultivated from wild bulbs, after being brought from Uzbekistan to Germany in 1871. It is native to Central Asia and northeastern Iran and has given rise to numerous cultivars, including 'Princesse Charmante'. This small tulip will not exceed 25 cm (10in) high when in bloom. Its foliage is a slightly greyish green, fairly wide, marked with brown and purple spots. The flowers appear in April, earlier or later depending on the climate. They are a hard to describe shade of red, somewhere between scarlet and vermilion, shiny like silk and open widely to reveal an orange-tinted centre. The base of the petals is warmed by a purplish hue. They bloom under the sun and close up when it goes in.

Botanical tulips do not degenerate over time like large-flowered tulips. They can naturalise and remain in place for several years without special maintenance and thrive in borders and rockeries. To create colourful compositions, they can be combined with various small bulbs: Crocus, Allium moly, Ipheion uniflorum, Anemone blanda, small-flowered Narcissus, Muscari, Puschkinia, Cyclamen coum, Erythronium pagoda, Leucojum vernum, snowdrops, Scilla sibirica... These tulips are unmatched for bringing spring colour to pots or sunny gardens.