A SMORGASBORD OF TULIPS
Planted in their thousands, these bright spring flowers put on a glorious show in the Swedish city of Malmö
Sweden isn’t the first place you might think of for growing tulips, as they are more usually associated with the bulb fields of Holland. But in the southern city of Malmö, with its climatic conditions similar to those of North Yorkshire, they clearly thrive just as well. Gardener John Taylor, a Yorkshireman who moved to Sweden for romantic reasons 25 years ago, wouldn’t be without them and he’d like to convince everyone else to grow them, too. So, in the city’s central Slottsträdgården, in an area just 100 metres by 20 metres, he has block-planted 7,000 tulips in every hue from sunshine yellow to deepest pink.
The effect is mesmerising – a living catalogue of 140 varieties with 50 bulbs of each, planted side by side, inspiring visitors to get down among them, examine them in detail and identify their favourites – which is exactly what John wants people to do. For the past 18 years, he has run this four-acre public garden beside Malmöhus Castle. It is financed by the city council as a public health project aimed at getting people outside and engaged with nature. Some will just come to look, while others dig away in one of the low-cost allotment plots that are also part of the park and used for growing flowers and vegetables.
The first tulip celebration devised by John took place in 2014, and from this year onwards he plans to run it biennially. “I absolutely love tulips – always have,” he says. “Put simply, pretty flowers make people happy, so the more I can plant in the gardens here the better. I’ve seen the display bring a tear to the eye of an older person – they find it moving. Also, tulips have a particularly fascinating history, having been traded and fought over since the 16th century. I’m interested in the way they have affected people socially, economically, romantically and spiritually.”
John’s plan for the bulb planting is highly disciplined and he works with only one or two assistants who can be trusted not to muddle up the different varieties. They plant in the third week of October, aiming to beat the first frost, which usually hits the garden a week later. To start with, the soil is well worked over to remove every stone, plant and root,
then it is raked to leave a fine, fluffy tilth that will be easy to plant the bulbs into.
Marking out is done with two sticks of willow and a length of string, then planting begins, working systematically through the alphabet. “Funnily enough, we usually start with ‘Abba’ (a tomatored double), quite appropriate for Sweden,” John says. “We lay the bulbs out, arranged in blocks, and when I say we plant 10cm apart, I don’t mean 10.5cm.” Once he’s satisfied with the spacing of the rows, the bulbs are dropped into the soil to a depth of three times their height, meticulously labelled and then left to grow.
One of John’s aims is to introduce visitors to new varieties, so every other year he travels to Keukenhof, south-west of Amsterdam, to visit the Dutch growers and get their recommendations for different ones to try. Recent favourites have been ‘Perestroyka’, ‘Pink Impression’, ‘Slawa’ and ‘Banja Luka’. “We specifically choose mid- to late-season tulips, flowering from mid-april to the last week in May. Don’t let anyone tell you that tulips are short-lived. If you select a good range, you can have some in flower for six or seven weeks,” he explains. John’s display includes parrots, viridifloras, single and double lates, lily-flowered, Darwins and dwarf species Tulipa fosteriana and T. kaufmanniana.
“Anyone could copy our block planting on a smaller scale at home,” he says. “If you want to mix tulips into the borders instead, plant in more casual groups of seven, ten or 15 and partner them with perennials such as Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ or N. ‘Walker’s Low’, or
good old Alchemilla mollis, whose leaves will grow up to disguise the dying tulip foliage.”
Over the past few years, John has featured in a weekly gardening programme on Swedish television, so has become well-known in his adopted country. His passion for gardening is infectious and he is proud of the work they do at Slottsträdgården to introduce people to its joys. As well as flower-filled borders, there are nine inspirational themed gardens, four exhibition fields and a school garden to encourage locals to grow their own vegetables and fruit, plus three allotment fields carved up into 60 small plots.
“We have people here on work training, those who are unemployed or suffering from burn-out and some who are refugees. Our job is to help them, whether that is to get back into employment or just to recover. We prune plants, we work the border, we plant and we sow. We believe in gardening as a motor for social change. I think that the more ground we can cover with flowers, the better the world will be.”
The 2017 tulip festival will be at its height around the end of April. Slottsträdgården (slottstradgarden.se) also hosts the annual Malmö Garden Show (2-4 June 2017). For details, see malmotown.com/malmogardenshow. Malmö is easy to reach from the UK by flying to Copenhagen and taking the train to Malmö centre.