There has been an explosion in the garden over the last few day. We had the hottest Easter weekend in memory and the Tulips were cooking in the blazing sun. A week ago most of them were barely showing any buds, now they are nearly all open. It is truly wonderful too see them after waiting so long, but also quite strange to have such a show when we are not even halfway through April. Still, I will choose not to dwell on the reasons for this too much and just enjoy the spectacle.
This year I decided to mix up my colours a bit, partly because I was inspired by Jo Thompsons delicious planting scheme in her Chelsea show garden last year. I’m sure I’m not the only one that found myself suddenly craving peachy tones after seeing that garden. It may also have had something to do with the large glass of wine I had in front of me during my late night bulb sale shopping session back in November. When all the bulbs arrived, I confess I questioned if it was wise to move away from my trusted pinks and purple tones but there I was with 700+ bulbs that needed to go into the ground so not too much time was wasted pondering. As the first blooms appeared a couple of weeks ago, I still felt unsure about the whole thing – some quite bold reds had made their way in and that really wasn’t my intention. Those ones were supposed to be hot pink. I thought about cutting all those first flowers for the house but decided to leave them. As more varieties started to open I felt happier with the mix, then the other day this soft orange tulip appeared and – yes! I LOVE it! Super happy I decided to try something different this year.
The weather has cooled down a bit so I hope we will get to enjoy the tulip show for another few weeks. I will show the whole picture another day and also do a full tulip roundup but for now, I am just going to stare at that pink and orange combo a while longer.
