On The Cover Susie’s Garden Spring blooms
Celebrate Easter with drifts of tulips – and why not combine them with other flowers to make a pretty bonnet?
With daffodils flowering and lambs in the fields, Easter is about new beginnings and that’s especially true in the garden. When my children were little we would have a garden Easter egg hunt, hiding the little foil wrapped chocolate eggs, enjoying watching them search for them. It’s a time to get the kids outside, to show them how to plant strawberries and potatoes or to help pick flowers for a bouquet. And why not make a decoration for the front door or in a window to cheer passers-by?
As well as eggs and bunnies, Easter is associated with tulips and daffodils. After winter we revel in their bright colours. If you can’t get outside, you can still enjoy a virtual garden visit by watching one of the delightful films on the National Garden Scheme website at NGS.ORG.UK.
There are nearly 200 gardens featured and if you enjoy the films you can consider supporting the Help Support our Nurses campaign with a donation. One of these uplifting virtual garden visits is to Ulting Wick in Essex, a beautiful garden that is spectacularly planted with thousands of tulips.
I love tulips for their incredible variety of shapes and colours. I usually set out the bulbs in my pots and borders in November but this year, because of frost and snow, I couldn’t plant them until January. They are fine though and just flowering a little later perhaps. My pots are filled with ‘Abu Hasan’, yellow-edged dark mahogany petals, and a Sarah Raven mix of orange pink and almost black tulips. April is the month for cherry blossom against the blue sky, for glorious camellias in glossy leaved shrubs, for primroses on sunny banks and above all for sumptuous colourful tulips.