Tulips Galore

April begins with bare brown branches and bare brown soil and ends with long days full of the majesty of Spring.

This is the best month of the year for blossom (isn’t that the most lovely word?) and tulips are at their peak. Who can resist a tulip? What better way to herald the arrival of spring? There is something so joyful about the intensity of them. They are the first real blaze of colour of the year and are the most silky of all flowers. I adore them – they have captured my heart. They are the stars of Columbine’s spring garden, with their vibrant forms they bring the garden alive after its winter rest.

I have many favourites (see my Oct 2021 blog), but if I had to choose just one, it would have to be Tulip ‘Exotic Emperor’. We grow lots them in our walled garden. It is the most magnificent tulip and deserving of its name. It flowers for at least six weeks and looks good from the moment the buds begin to develop until it is almost dropping. It has large, double white flowers with a delicate green flame held on strong stems above sword-shaped leaves. It adds such elegance and class to the garden here. It is a joy to behold and impossible not to love. And at dusk – when all white flowers look at their very best – they shimmer and shine out from the soft falling light.

Without question, this is my favourite time of year. I am dazed by the emerging greenness of everything. That luminous lime green that begins speckling the hedgerows and by the end of the month all the hedgerows are out and clothed in blossom.

There is still so much more to come and that is why I love April so much. It delivers all you might possibly desire along with the absolute certainty that there’s even better to come.