UP THE GARDEN PATH
Louise Tomlin focuses on the bright and cheerful tulip to remind us that spring is just around the corner Louise Tomlin focuses on the bright and cheerful tulip to remind us that spring is just around the corner
Here we are in the midst of what the popular news media are dubbing the ‘winter of discontent’. Grim times for most of us, as if winter isn’t generally bad enough anyway with the cold and dark dominating our lives. If we ever needed cheering up it’s now, so I’m determined to try to do just that with some bright, colourful images and some fascinating facts that I hope will distract you, even if it’s just for a short while.
A suitable topic that fits the billis tulips. They never fail to cheer me up. When I see their hopeful shoots starting to show sometime in January, it’s almost always a surprise, as I quite often forget I’ve planted them. It reminds me of the bold and beautiful colours that gave m pleasure last spring, and suddenly life doesn’t seem quite so bad.
Along with them being visually delightful, there’s a lot to know about their history. You may have heard of the ‘Tulip Mania’ that swept through Europe, that started in Holland in the 17th century when tulips arrived there. However, the original mania started in the 16th century in Turkey, when the Ottoman Empire conquered Kazakhstan. A wildflower was discovered, the Turks were very impressed by its beauty and they were cultivated in Turkey for the Sultan’s pleasure. The flower was put in the Sultan’s turban as a decorative touch, which is supposedly how it got its name, ‘tulipan’ means ‘turban’ in Turkish.
When I was younger I mistakenly believed tulips came from Holland, that’s probably because Dutch merchants recognised the money-making potential of these flowery treasures when they travelled to the Ottoman region in search of exotic art and curiosities to bring back to Europe in the 1630s. They became particularly obsessed with a type of tulip bulb they referred to as ‘broken’ that had flowers with stripes and speckles. These were considered so unusual they were highly sought after, and unbelievably people would do anything to own them, including stealing them out of gardens. Prices rocketed; just one Semper Augustus Tulip bulb could sell for the equivalent value of a house. The ‘Tulip Mania’ spread to France and on to England, with collectors going wild. As with most falsely inflated economic bubbles this one eventually burst and the market crashed with many investors losing everything.
Despite all the craziness the popularity of the tulip has endured, in springtime there are many tulip festivals, possibly the most famous is at the Keukenhof Flower Gardens not far from Amsterdam. Between mid March to early May visitors can immerse themselves in displays of millions of blooms. Another one that sounds like it’s well worth visiting is in Istanbul. They put on a massive show by planting up parks and public spaces with millions of Tulips, with special performances and concerts taking place during the flowering period. If you’re thinking of something a little closer to home there’s a tradition of tulip growing in the Lincolnshire Fens, around Spalding. The reclaimed flat marshland looks very similar to parts of the Netherlands in a region aptly named South Holland. The area is famed for growing tulips, daffodils and hyacinths and in the spring the fields are teeming with vivid colours, it’s quite spectacular. There are also the Springfields Festival Gardens close by that showcase the local bulb growers flowering successes.
As well as the history of these beautiful flowers there’s a lot of information online about their symbolic meaning, for instance pink stands for happiness, yellow symbolises cheerfulness, red ones are given to someone you love unconditionally, white ones are for forgiveness and purple for royalty. I’m sorry, but I find this type of info rather ridiculous and smacks of twaddle invented by marketing bods!
Instead, I’d like to concentrate on what I love about tulips, their fantastic colours that brighten up my day, and their pleasing symmetrical shape. Why not treat yourself to your own mini tulip festival? Look out for some bargain bulbs that might be reduced as it’s getting late in the season to plant them out, they’re normally planted in the autumn, but you can still sneak some in in February and then you too can have a blast of springtime joy.
