When to Plant Tulips (And Why We’re Mostly Not Fans)
If you’re here because you Googled “When should I plant tulips?” let’s get this out of the way right up front:
When to Plant Tulips:
Tulips are planted in the fall.
Typically, October through early November in the Northeast, once soil temperatures cool but before the ground freezes.
Now, let’s talk about the part most garden blogs politely skip.
Tulips are not native to the eastern United States. They basically evolved in very different climates and ecosystems, and here, they behave exactly like plants that don’t belong. They struggle, they disappear, and they generally require a surprising amount of human intervention for something marketed as “easy spring color.”
If you’ve ever planted tulips once and wondered why they didn’t come back reliably the next year, you didn’t do anything wrong. That’s normal.
Tulips often:
- Decline after one or two seasons.
- Get eaten by chipmunks, voles, and deer.
- Require replanting every fall to maintain a “display.”
- Offer little to no ecological value to native insects.
In other words, tulips are a short-term visual event, not a long-term garden system.
From an ecological standpoint, planting tulips every fall is a bit like buying cut flowers and burying them. It’s ornamental consumption, not landscape stewardship.
And yes, tulips are historically associated with Holland. That doesn’t make them evil, but it does mean they’re out of context here. Our soils, wildlife, and climate simply aren’t set up to support them long-term without constant replacement. If tulips are your passion, you may be happier gardening somewhere they actually thrive naturally. (We hear the Netherlands are lovely.)
If you do choose to plant tulips, anyway, understand what you’re signing up for:
- Plant in fall, every fall.
- Expect losses.
- Expect browsing.
- Expect to replace them.
Choose spring flowers that:
- Return reliably.
- Support pollinators.
- Increase in strength over time.
- Don’t require annual replanting.
There are native wildflower woodland ephemerals and early blooming native wildflower perennials that quietly do all of that without the drama.
At the end of the day, gardening is obviously about choices. You can choose fleeting spectacle, or you can choose resilience. One asks more of you every year. The other gets better with time.
If you’re curious about building landscapes that actually belong where you live, that’s the work we do. And we promise: spring can still be beautiful without importing disappointment one bulb at a time.