I love a good tulip and I love all sorts of tulips. I am a great fan of species tulips for their simplicity and ability to clump up. I love simple single colour tulips, good strong colours and even the odd pastel. I like double flowered ones and lily shaped ones. I even had the odd fringed one here and there. A few years ago I bought a few 'Flaming Parrot' ones. I liked the bright colour and thought they might look quite entertaining.
They went above and beyond my expectations. They are as bright and vibrant as I had hoped. What I had not expected was that the flowers would last for a long time, closing up and unfurling beautifully day after day.
One on its own looks good, but a small clump is much more than the sum of its parts.
We all know that some tulips are little more than annuals and will flower once and never be seen again. I am not one of those people who carefully plant them in baskets and lift them to refresh the display every year, I have not got the patience for that. I plant them and if they return it is good, if they do not I shrug and move on. I find many tulips will have a year off and then pop up the next year. These tulips, however, are in the happy category of returning year and after year. This makes me very happy. So happy in fact I decided to invest in a couple of different varieties this year.
This is Green Wave.
It is a fabulous unfurler.
I always love when a tulip goes over a little and is so widespread open it is clearly soaking up every moment of sun it can. This is a tulip expressing joy.
and this is Estella Rijnveld. A wonderfully grand name for a superbly flamboyant lady.
She is without doubt a doozy of a floozy!
I have her in a pot on the front door step thinking they might be quite cheerful. I love it when a plan comes together. If you peer carefully you might think that some of the background shadow looks a little tortoiseshell.... spot the Esme......
As you might of course have already guessed, I will be buying more for next year. I can completely understand why tulips are the source of obsession, or as it is called 'tulipmania' now and in the past. If you have never read the book 'The Tulip' by Anna Pavord then you should. It is such a great book which I must have bought more years ago than I care to remember. In fact as I think about it I think this is the perfect time for a re-read......
