April 2014

            I drove up to the Skagit Valley north of Seattle last week to pick up some native plants for a creek side restoration project I am working on. But what hit me in the face were these most unnatural fields on fire. The tulips are nearly unavoidable in the valley this time of year; I wasn’t even driving through the main tourist-attracting fields of the valley.

            I was glad it was Monday, a bit cloudy, and oh, so early. I knew the tulip festivalgoers would be reduced to the few intrepid photographers craving the perfect light, and those who were smart enough to get here early. And who like me don’t like crowds. I knew the roads would be clear for travel and I could do my business and get out of the valley with efficiency.

            I also knew I would have a few intimate moments with the tulips.

            Oh, I love to gawk and speed by these flaming fields. Shock and awe! Shock and awe! But I really love to get down into the fields and find the individuals.

            In my own garden, the effect is more homely. I cluster little clutched of tulips here and there, where I think they might grow—thrive even, and return next year maybe.

This gives me the opportunity to get in close. To examine, admire and create an intimacy that those crowded, roaring fields negate. Did you ever try to have an intimate conversation at a carnival?

 I imitated the medieval gardeners who grew tulips in meadows. Here  Tulipa clusiana  ‘PeppermintStick’   under a cherry in the orchard.

I imitate this naturalistic use of tulips in a clients garden. Here is T. clusiana ‘Tubergin’s Gem’ with Molina cerulean ” Variegata’ and Hosta ‘ Birchwood Parkey’s Gold’ where I hope it will perennialize.

At home I grow most of my species tulips among the weeds of our raised gravel drive. I am trying to imitate there home turf in Central Asia where they grow in high altitude meadows which are waterlogged in Spring and dry in summer.

This little beauty was sold to me as T. orphanidea lava; I think it might be T. whittalii

The trouble with species tulips is so many look so similar.

            I have introduced quite a few new tulips to my collection, which would shrink without new introductions each year. Here are some tulips I am trying for the first time.

“Synaeda King’ ruled our kitchen table for a few weeks this April.

T. humilis ‘Odalisque’ is a species tulip which I am hoping will settle in and re-bloom.

‘Fostery King’ had these showy black stems long before it ever bloomed, but those red flowers with the white base have been holding up to rain. A winner!

An Heirloom from Old House Gardens T. Elegans ‘Rubra’, truly elegant in a way this photographer was challenged to capture.

T. praestans ‘ Shogun’ is by far the best new tulip for me. Loads of this wonderful color on very healthy robust plants.

I am as much of a sucker for the tiny species tulips as I am for those flaming fields. Tulipa kopakowskiana had me on my belly to get this shot.

I plant plenty of tulips for clients, who love a fresh shot of color come April. I tried ‘Mango Charm’ this year. What a wonderfully luminous tulip it was.

This individual is showing the virus induced breaking so valued by tulips fanciers.

I love a good strong pink tulip to stand up to all the gaudy lushness of spring in the Northwest.

‘Gander’ fit that bill perfectly.

            The rains came as they do almost every year during tulip season. Pummeling rain, and cold damp air make it easy for tulip fire (Botrytis tulipae) a fungal disease that can wipe out your tulips in a few short days. I curse it, yet refuse to use the systemic fungicides that stop it.

            So I “rescued” a few tulips and brought them into the house, created a little studio on the kitchen table to do some portrait work with my new macro lens. I was no longer shockedly gawking at a landscape on fire with color—a delight in itself—but up close and personal. As the lens allowed me to insinuate myself into the very flesh of these petals and sexual organs, I saw landscapes no car could race past. Landscapes that demanded stillness— every tremble of my hand a hurricane, every bump of the table an earthquake.

‘ Fostery King’ , again, showing off his female parts.

‘Aleppo’ and…

‘Curly Sue’ giving us some lip.

A broken “Perestroyka’.

‘Black Diamond’ early in the morning.

            I am not just a collector of tulips for the sake of collecting. I am searching for the perfect tulip for the Northwest garden. One that re-blooms, maybe even multiplies, and doesn’t get the tulip fire. I laid my hopes on the species tulips, but they are a finicky bunch. What I am finding, and this is not conclusive, is that hybrid tulips are often better. I am no scientist; I have no methods. But fortunately I miss a few tulips when digging them out of my clients’ gardens each year, so I get to see, which might have survived, which would bloom again. Here are a few unexpected surprises.

I had nearly a dozen ‘Barcelona’ tulips that I planted last year bloom again this spring, and no sign of blight.

One lone ‘Passionale’ stoically re-bloomed.

I had several ‘ Bleu Amiable’ bloom again this year. I had planted them four years ago and they had only bloomed the first year. And now again in rather heavy wet soils, this was a true surprise.

This little cutie, which was sold to me as ‘Acuminata’ re-bloomed this year after a three year rest. I love a yellow mystery.

Alas, tulip time has come to pass. Time to get the vegetables started.

When Michael and I were in Hawaii a month ago, we spent an afternoon wandering through downtown Hilo. We came upon a thrift store and decided to go in and look at the racks of old Hawaiian shirts we could see from the window. We leafed through the shirt like the pages of a giant botanical book, leafed through anthuriums and orchids, through hibiscus and palm fronds. We leafed through color after color; yet, were strangely uninspired.

I decided to take a quick look through the books as we exited, just in case. And there it was, a large coffee table book devoted to tulips.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.  My head still swimming with orchids, anthuriums, et cie.

It was a volume I didn’t think I had, but in the moment was unsure. It wasn’t the best tulip book I’d ever seen. Mostly showy portraits of individual tulips or Dutch fields roaring with color. In many ways it was not unlike the shirts we just fondled and declined. It was only $5 and slim enough to fit into my collection back home between ‘TULIPA” by Christopher Baker and “TULIPS” by Peter Arnold.

But even at the price it seemed the wrong thing to bring back from our trip to paradise. So I passed on that rare find as out of place as blond-haired blue-eyed me on this South Pacific Isle.

Still the book came with me. Not as object. I wondered whether some mainlander who moved to paradise packed it along. Or had a wandering Hawaiian dragged it back from a spring visit to Holland or the Skagit Valley? Obviously it had become as useless as those Hawaiian shirts. I wondered, if I moved there, to Hawaii, would I bring my tulip books with. Would I miss tulips? Or forget about them.

Had the person who brought this book here, maybe all the way from Vermont, half a world away, became numb to the homesickness, the longing for winter and then spring. And with spring, tulips. Maybe other colorful flowers over the years seeped into their psyche and replaced the deep and familial feeling that tulips always gave.

Maybe it belonged to a Hawaiian so tired of the repetitious beauty of anthuriums, orchids, and palms, that the tulip had a great fascination for them. Like some northerners adore orchids, or anthuriums.

Michael and I entertain the idea of moving to the 50^th State, paradise, the Big Island. Would I pack my tulips library? It would be useless there, where flowers bloom everywhere all year, where a book of flower pictures in January is really not necessary. Where I could not grow tulips.

But Could I let my collection of tulip books sit in a mainland storage locker for 2 years, 5 years, 20 years, while I grew tan and old under a coconut palm? Could I abandon my passion for the genus? Replace it with another, like anthuriums?

Not orchids—way to many orchids.

Suddenly this love I feel for tulips, this tulipomania, feels crazy.  Just a flower among flowers, and even more flowers covering this planet.

Still I can’t take my eyes off of them, so more tulip posts to follow.