My first thought was some kind of mint, since they return early in the season and could be growing right among the tulips. They do tend to be aggressive, though, and might take over a small bed. What about lavender? Ideally, you should trim lavender back in either late fall or early spring to maintain a nice shape to the plants. And lavender would love ten hour of sun. Other herbs would also be good. Hopefully others will have different ideas.

Martha

I use Rozanne geranium to obscure aging daffodils.

I probably wouldn't use mint as it wanders fairly aggressively, though it isn't super difficult to get rid of if you decide you don't want it. It just doesn't play too well with other perennials, and a bed of just mint would be rather boring. There are a fair number of better plants. Right now I have fern-leaf bleeding heart (Dicentra eximia) that's good-sized (even blooming in warm spots) and my early daffodils only began a week ago. My peony foliage is well up also, and peonies are ultimate low maintenance perennial IMO. I put a support ring in about now, and I cut the foliage to the ground and remove the ring after a fall freeze. If you have stiff-stemmed types of single peonies, you can skip the ring. That's it. My daylilies are also well sprouted by now and daylilies are often used to hide dying bulb foliage. Some Clematis (type 3 pruners) get cut to near the ground in the fall, so your tulips would bloom before the clematis has resprouted too much. Hopefully, you will get other suggestions as well.

However, since you say that you are a new gardener, I would ask that you take a step back and do a bit of thinking about this plan before it gets any further along. (I am truly not trying to be discouraging, but want you to go into this plan with good information and perhaps save you some $ and heartbreak.) Do you have deer or squirrels or or rabbits or voles? If so, you may not be successful with tulips as they are often eaten by those critters. The voles eat the bulbs over the winter, the deer eat the blossoms, and the squirrels have been known to eat both, or at least dig up the bulbs. Tulips are a real delicacy in the animal world. There are things you can do to help reduce this likelihood, including fencing out deer, using sprays designed to discourage critters on both the bulbs and the flowers, and planting the bulbs in gravel or wire baskets, but all add expense and time. There are also other types of bulbs that are more resistant to munching by critters if you want to try other bulbs as well.

Another issue is that most tulips were bred for the cut flower market and don't perennialize well. In other words, they bloom beautifully the first year, and after that will only put up leaves if they return at all. There are some tulips that will perennialize to varying degrees, but you need to choose the varieties carefully. Many of my species tulips return well. I've also seen certain tulip groups and varieties labeled as more likely to perennialize by the two bulb suppliers I most often use. John Scheepers labels their Darwin tulips as more likely to perennialize as well as occasional notes on other particular tulips, and in Brent and Becky's Bulbs you have to read the individual descriptions where they will note if a tulip has become perennial for them. Probably other suppliers will do this as well. Many beautiful displays of tulips that you see are freshly planted each fall with the varieties that don't return reliably, so letting the foliage die back naturally isn't needed and you could plant any variety you want, cut back after blooming, and plant new ones in the fall.

Good luck with however you decide to proceed with your garden, and be sure to come back here and add photos when plants are growing.

I have a bed of daffodils interplanted with peonies. Right now, the daffodils are in full bloom, and the peonies are about 8 to 10 tall; by the time the daffodils are done, the peonies will be almost fully leafed out. They don't shade the daffodil foliage completely, and they seem to coexist quite happily.

there is something wrong with your equation... but it is escaping me ... its been a long winter ...

i use annuals .. over bulbs ..... but i dont recall why ...

i will mull this.. ans see if it pops in my head ...

you are welcome for this total lack of anything usable .. lol .. i am hoping someone else.. will trigger my recall ...

ken

PS: the dying leaves are incredibly attractive ... in a zen sort of way ... its a cycle of ma nature .. fascinating to watch ... and heightens anticipation of the energy they are storing.. for the next year .... to say its not attractive ... is to not apply the proper frame of mind.. to the yearly evolution.. of your garden ...

I use lavender and peonies and might plant some miniature conifers too. I agree with NHbabs and follow what she described to deter the creatures. It sounds like a lot, but I don' t find it so, because I love tulips! I have deer, voles and squirrels in abundance. I plant bulbs without leaving any trace of the papery skins behind. I put chicken wire at the bottom of the hole at planting and chicken wire on top of the hole from October until early spring. I remove the above chicken wire when the bulbs poke through the earth in April. I scatter blood meal around the emerging bulbs. The squirrels can dig up the bulbs then, so I use sunflower seeds in the bird feeder, which the squirrels love and eat on the ground and I have a lot of oaks, which provide them with acorns-so they dig those up in the Spring and seem to ignore the bulbs, when not protected with the chicken wire. After advice on these forums, I use Irish spring soap scattered in the beds and liquid fence on the bulb foliage for the deer. Maybe my efforts are why I still have tons of tulips or it is blind luck. Only time will tell. So far, the voles haven't taken any-or I didn't notice, because I plant a lot of tulips. Anyway, it is a thought, if you have vermin too.

Peony, day lily, and nepeta make good covers, and named Nepeta cultivars like Walkers Low aren't aggressive or invasive.

Also useful are some Geranium cultivars--Rozanne, Dilys, Brookside for example.

I read that planting them under deciduous shrubs is also a way to hide the yellowing foliage. I'm going to try this later in the year.

not with tulips, Catkin - they need to be baked all summer in blazing sun and totally well drained soil in order to have any hope of returning. Or at least, this is my experience of them...but not if they are shaded or the grass or perennials have got too large. Daffodils would be fine.

Which kind of answers the OP too, even putting the foraging beasties to one side.

I grow many hundreds on my sunny open allotment...you might want to look at some of the species tulips which are, as a rule, more reliable as well as having a dainty charm.

My mistake! I thought I'd read most bulbs did okay planted under a deciduous shrub. :~)

I think many of them do, Catkin (especially spring bloomers), but tulips originated on high, baked middle-eastern foothills and plains. Given similar growing conditions, they have proved to be as perennial as narcissi, crocus et al...but the widespread use of spring bulbs under deciduous trees and shrubs has led to many tulips being planted in similar circumstances...and this they will not stand for - not even Darwins or species types...apart from the latest blooming tulip - the elusive t.sprengeri...which will actually grow in a woodland clearing or dappled shade.

Thanks for that, Camp. I don't grow tulips but I have one *Angelique* bulb that has supplied me with one bloom only for the last 15 years or so..must be planted deep! Any other tulips I've ever planted are long gone.