Proper horticultural advice you've been given there - you are supposed to lift tulips (well, apart from a few of the species varieties, which may naturalise, although that's not been my experience with them). Whether you bother or not is up to you - most of us don't trouble to do it, but you take the risk they'll get infected, or rot in the ground.

You could leave them in the ground, as long as your soil is well drained and they can get a good Summer baking. Otherwise they slowly deteriorate and the flowers get smaller and fewer. They really do need (most of them) a good hot Summer to ripen the bulb. This is achieved commercially by lifting them and drying off the bulbs. To be honest, most people treat them as annuals and replace every year with new.

Snap, at least we agree!

I had to look twice at your final comment, Owdboggy - read it first as 'at last' rather than 'least', lol!

LOL Bamboo!

Hi Garth and welcome to GoY. As always there are different opinions - I always leave my tulips in the ground as I'm idle.

When we moved into our previous house twenty years ago, I found there were red and yellow tulips already planted in a well drained flower bed under a huge sycamore tree. When I looked over the fence last spring (having moved to the house next door the previous year) they were still there and still flowering. The only care they'd had was to get their share of slow release fertilizer scattered and twiddled into the soil most springs and the odd top dressing of garden compost when available.

So the choice is yours - lift or leave, you decide!

I do find that tulips in the ground deteriorate after a couple of years, so I'd agree with Bamboo and Owdboggy on this one, if you want a good display. It really depends whether your flower bed is solely bulbs, or if you have a mixture with perennials in there as well, I think.

If you just have tulips underplanted with something, e.g. forget-me-nots or wall flowers, then I'd lift them. If they're mixed in, then follow Beattie's advice - leave and feed!

I plan on leaving my bulbs, partly because I can't remember exactly where I planted them, and partly because I can't be bothered. I will just feed the garden well, and hopefully everything will be alright.

In northern Arizona, they perennialize Tulips by planting them deep, 15-20cm deep, in well drained, sandy soil.

don't do at all well in my solid clay.....

I expect they rot, Pam. :-((

Probably Spritz, I've some in pots this year but after the winter we've had-- now all the rain-- I'll probably not see them again :o)