Tulips

The tulips have arrived! They are always early risers in the Spring garden, as the bulbs are planted in the depths of November. This is because tulips are native to mountainous areas and need a period of cold dormancy in order to grow. We had an amazing team of women tackle the bed in the Autumn last year. It was so over grown with couch grass, and they worked together to dig, weed and rake it ready for planting. We had another team plant all the bulbs, there was about 60-70 bulbs, so that was no mean feat! We went for a mix of colours, textures and sizes. So I thought I would share them with you on the blog, soon as you can’t enjoy them in real life. They have added a lovely pop of colour to the garden and have really made us feel like Spring has truly arrived.

There are around 75 wild species of tulips and 150 species in total with over 3000 varieties, so there really is a tulip to suit everyone. They grow really well in pots, so are perfect if you are growing in a small garden, or on a balcony. You probably associate tulips with Holland, as it is the main producer and distributer in the world. I have been reading about tulips and their history and found out that between 1634 - 1637 there was a period named as ‘Tulip Mania’. This is when people started going mad for tulips and it started an economic frenzy! The value of the flower shot up overnight and became the most expensive flower in the world, and even started to become treated as a form of currency. At the peak of Tulip Mania, certain bulbs were selling for 10 times more than the annual income of a skilled worker. I also found out that tulip petals are actual able to be eaten, and during the Dutch the famine of 1944 in World War 2, people often had to resort to eating sugar beets and tulips (maybe not recommended now though!).