Dutch tulip fields

Dutch Bulbs! Magic words, that picture glorious visions before the mind's eye, all over the world. They sound like music to anyone knowing Dutch bulbs, and no wonder. Is there any flower that helps so intensely to chase away the gloom and dreary dusk in the darkest months of the year? From our dwellings, from our very souls!

How quite different our room looks in December, when winter's sadness gets wiped away by putting a pot of the scarlet tulip "Duc van Tholl" in the window sill. It is just as if these bright-red children of nature bring into your home light and beneficial warmth, fore-boding hopes and expectations. And when the dark month of January is there; when wind and snow and rain and sleet make life outdoors a misery, how delightful is it to see on the little table in your hall, or here and there in your drawing room pots of hyacinths, with their delicate colours, their beautiful shapes, and their delicious scent.

Nature seems dead during the winter months; the leafless trees and shrubs, the beds without flowers, the lack of colours in a place we knew a few months ago as a joy, as a spot full of brightness, makes our garden into a fhing we don't think about anymore, till real spring comes, and trees and shrubs show their first tender green leaves. But for those who know better, the garden will remain, even in a time when nature is generally "at its worst", that is in January, February and March, a treasury, a place full of promises and realisations.

Those who knew better, planted in autumn: Snowdrops; Winter Aconite, Glory of the snow (Chionodoxa); Squill (Scilla), of different kinds and Crocusses. And now when the sun is out in the last days of January, or the first days of February, we may venture a walk in our garden, looking for the bright yellow flowers of the Winter Aconite. And a little later, even when the snow is on the ground, the lovely Snowdrops and the blue Squill of Early Spring, with its bright blue flowers. We have not to wait till we see the first leaves to know that Nature is still wide awake; and all those little gems tell us of the coming Spring.

They are all promises of a near future, when Tulips, Hyacinths, Narcissi and Irisses will take their place and cover the soil again with a blaze of colour. To get proper results however with bulbs, in the garden, in the greenhouse, or indoors, it is necessary to know exactly how to treat them, and we therefore will give on this website some hints and tips soon. So bookmark this page!