Miss Fernandez, tulip bulbs like to be dry in the summer. I have some regular returnees that are in dry hot baked soil all summer. Others I put in pots that are moved & left dry all summer. My daffodils, muscari, hyacinths, brodiaea, alliums, freesia Dutch iris, ixia, sparaxis and homeria do fine with the roses, perrenials and annuals. Summer blooming dahlias, gladiolus & lilies do fine in the mixed bed. Your soil, watering schedule and summer/winter temperatures will all play a part in success. Sunset has a good basic booklet on bulbs.

With any bed of bulbs (e.g. tulips, lilies, daffodils, hyacinths, etc.) or rhizomes (e.g. irises) you should expect to dig it up every 3-4 years. Many varieties of tulips are poor perennializers though - it's common to see tulips which bloom for about two years, then the bed only produces foliage because all the bulbs have split, and the new small bulbs won't flower until they get bigger. Many people treat tulip bulbs as an annual, discarding the ones in the ground and replacing them with new-bought bulbs every year, or every 2 years. If you specifically want to plant tulips once and have them survive and keep flowering for years you have to do a bit of research and use one of the varieties which is good at that.

another bump up ... i believe it speaks for itself.. anything to add??? ken Here is a link that might be useful: there are a bunch of other newbie posts that i created over the years.. but i am not going to bump them all up myself .... but you can ... old posts do not hang in GW forever.. unless they are bumped every now and then ...

It is best to leave the foliage undisturbed until it has turned yellow and has started to die back. Braiding, bunching or removing the foliage prematurely reduces the ability of the leaves to photosynthesize. The bulb is extremely depleted after putting out the flower and leaves, and the best way to rebuild it, so that it has the energy to flower again next year, is to have as much of the leaves as possible exposed to the sun. Some people do braid or bunch the leaves and claim that their tulips or daffodils return just fine every year - that's quite possible, but they'd get an even bigger flower, and and the bulbs would multiply faster if they would leave the leaves alone. If after 6-8 weeks the leaves are still green, with no signs of yellowing, you may cut them back, as 90% of the bulb rebuilding will be done at that point. BP