Tulips at Keukenhof

May is rushing by and I haven’t yet shared with you some of the tulips from Keukenhof.  If you are like tulips at all, do visit; I’ve been wanting to visit for several years and I wasn’t disappointed.  We stayed in Amsterdam from 25th to 29th April.  I’d never visited Amsterdam before and found it a lovely city.  The museums were spectacular.  Everything was incredibly well organised, even though it was the peak week for visiting Keukenhof we walked straight into the park, just showing our pre-bought ticket at the entrance.

A walk around the spring garden, but what’s missing?

Regular follows of my posts may wonder why I haven’t been posting every day to show you the development of my treasured wisteria.  Usually it is in full flower by the end of March and here we are in the middle of April and still I haven’t shared any images with you.

In a vase on Mon……..

OK, I know it is Tuesday today but Cathy at Rambling in the garden is usually very tolerant of late-comers!

In a Vase on Monday – all together now!

Monday gives everyone the opportunity to pick something from their gardens to put in a vase and enjoy in their homes; Cathy at Rambling in the Garden can have had no idea what a change she was going to make to people’s lives when she first thought up this meme.

In a vase on Monday – Tulips season continues

OK, so I know I am a bit obsessed with tulips; but when a flower has so many different colours to choose from, and the different varieties flower over such a long period AND you can control their flowering to some extent I don’t think my obsession is so hard to understand.

April 15th 2016 The season moves on

The season is racing ahead.  Yesterday there was just one variety of bearded iris flowering, already today there are three!

Cistus are flowering too.

Cistus are beginning to flower

Cistus are beginning to flower

But before I rush forever forward towards summer; I wanted to the share the the remaining tulips which have given me so much pleasure this year.  

April 2nd 2016

More tulips are flowering but these daily posts aren’t just about individual plants and flowers, there’s plenty of eye candy for flower lovers out there; I want you to get to know the garden so that when you do see an individual plant you can place where it is in the garden in your minds eye.

In a vase on Monday – and more tulips

Monday has arrived again and I haven’t posted since my vase last week.  I have had a virus and not felt up to doing very much at all and on Wednesday last week the winds were so strong it was almost impossible to stand up.  One of the canes helping to support the new Carrob broke in too leaving the tree blowing wildly around and so despite the cold and wind I had to help rescue it. 

Tulips 2015 – My thoughts

Looking back over my photographs of tulips for this year I realise that the season was very short.  A few appeared at the end of March but the majority were completely finished by the end of April, a few very late varieties in shady spots have clung on until this week but not in a way to make any kind of show.

I have a memory that last year I spent weeks walking along the, then, new spring walk.  I was disappointed that so few of the tulips in the spring walk actually flowered again this year.  There are a couple of possible reasons.

1. Mice ate some of the bulbs during the summer or winter; I did find some holes while I was weeding the bed in early spring.
2. The plants of Sisyrinchium had bulked up so thickly the shoots of the bulbs couldn’t force their way through.

Extending the Spring walk

Last year the spring walk gave me so much pleasure that I decided to extend it last autumn so that now it is at least half as long again as it was before.  Even more pleasure I hope!