Tulips are forgiving, but they are not indifferent. Plant them at the wrong depth in heavy soil, or cut the leaves back the moment the flowers fade, and you will get one decent spring and very little afterwards. Get the small things right across the year, though, and the same bed will reward you season after season.

What follows is a working calendar rather than a rulebook. UK gardens vary enormously: a border in Cornwall can be a fortnight ahead of one in Aberdeenshire, and a sheltered south-facing wall shifts everything again. Treat each month as a prompt, then look at what your own plants are doing.

August and September: buy early, plan the spot

Bulbs go on sale from late summer, and the good varieties sell out first. Order then, but do not plant yet. Store bulbs in a cool, dark, airy place — a garage shelf or a shed that does not get baked by afternoon sun. A warm kitchen or a sealed plastic bag will encourage mould before the bulbs ever reach the soil.

While you wait, sort out where they are going. Tulips want sun for at least half the day and soil that drains freely. The single biggest cause of failure is a wet, heavy bed that sits waterlogged through winter. If your soil is clay, either improve it with grit and organic matter or plant in containers and raised beds instead.

• Open border: fine if water drains away within a few hours of heavy rain.
• Containers: use loam-based compost with crocks or broken pots in the base.
• Raised bed: the simplest fix for a damp garden.
• Avoid: hollows at the bottom of a slope, and any spot where tulips have grown in the past two or three years.

That last point matters. Tulip fire, a fungal problem that leaves leaves twisted, blotched and grey with mould, builds up in soil where bulbs have been grown repeatedly. Rotating the planting position is far easier than trying to cure it later.

October and November: planting

Plant when the soil has cooled but before it freezes hard. For most of the UK that means October through mid-November, and it is not too late even into early December in mild, coastal areas. Late planting is much better than early planting into warm soil.

Dig a hole or trench and set the bulbs with the pointed end up. If you genuinely cannot tell which end is which, lay them on their side — they will sort themselves out. Firm the soil back, water once, and then leave them alone.

Depths and spacings

• Tall garden tulips: about 15cm deep, 10–15cm apart.
• Species tulips: 8–10cm deep and slightly closer, as they are smaller bulbs.
• Containers: roughly 10–15cm deep, 5cm apart, in layers if you like.
• Heavy clay: add a handful of grit to each planting hole and sit the bulb on it.

Squirrels, mice and sometimes deer will dig bulbs out within days. Lay chicken wire or netting flat over the surface and peg it down, or plant through a sheet of mesh. Once the ground has had a couple of cold spells, a light mulch of compost or bark will tidy the bed without doing any harm.

December and January: watch, do not water

Underground, roots are forming and there is nothing useful to add above. Check containers after heavy rain and tip out any standing water in saucers. If pots sit in a tray, raise them onto feet so water drains freely. Resist watering in open ground, however dry the surface looks — wet winter soil is the enemy here, not drought.

Avoid walking over frozen beds, which can crush emerging shoots, and check stored spare bulbs every few weeks, discarding any that have gone soft or developed patches of grey mould.

February and March: emergence, feeding and pest patrol

Shoots push through as the soil warms. This is the stage when slugs and snails do the most damage, so set traps or go out with a torch after dark. A ring of grit or crushed shells around the crowns helps a little, and so does clearing damp debris from around the bed.

Start feeding as the leaves open. A balanced liquid feed or a tomato feed, given every fortnight, keeps the foliage strong and supports the bulb while it is still building reserves. If the spring is dry, water thoroughly once a week rather than little and often — deep soakings encourage roots downwards.

What tulip fire looks like

Distorted, stunted shoots, brown or grey blotches on the leaves, and a fuzzy grey mould in damp conditions. There is no reliable cure. Lift and bin the affected bulbs — never compost them — and do not replant tulips in that spot for a few years.

April: flowering

Water containers regularly once buds colour up; a pot can dry out in two days in a warm, windy spell. Taller varieties, particularly the old cottage and Darwin types, appreciate a discreet stake or a length of twine run along a bamboo cane. Do it early, while the stems are still flexible.

Deadhead as each flower fades. Snap off the seed head with your fingers, taking the swollen pod but leaving the stem and all the leaves intact. Seed production drains energy that would otherwise go back into the bulb. And please, do not fold, knot or tie the leaves — they need light to photosynthesise for the six weeks after flowering.

May and June: lifting and storage

Leave the foliage until it has yellowed but not shrivelled to paper. Then lift. Slide a fork in well away from the stems, ease the bulbs up, brush off loose soil and lay them in trays in a cool, airy shed to dry for a week or two. Do not wash them. Discard anything soft, damaged or suspiciously light.

Once dry, clean off the old skins and store in paper bags, nets or labelled trays somewhere dark, dry and frost-free, ideally around 15°C. Keep them away from ripening fruit, which gives off a gas that can damage bulbs in store. Check them monthly and remove any that start to rot.

In free-draining soil, you can leave tulips in the ground and plant annuals over them instead. Expect smaller flowers over time, and be prepared to replace them every couple of years. Species tulips and a few sturdy garden varieties cope far better with this treatment than the big, flamboyant ones.

July: reset the bed

Use the gap to rest the soil. Fill it with annuals, herbs or a green manure rather than more bulbs. Wash containers with warm soapy water and store them dry and upside down. Then spend ten minutes noting what worked: which varieties came back strongly, which colours clashed, which pots were too small. That note is what turns next autumn's order into a better display.

Making the checklist work in a real garden

Two habits matter more than any others. Deadhead promptly, and leave the leaves alone until they yellow — that combination is what builds next year's flowers. Everything else is adjustable. If you only remember one date, make it the deadheading, because it takes seconds and it is the difference between a bed that fades and a bed that returns.

Photo: OnzeCreativitijd / Pixabay