Strategies for crafting an impressive tulip spectacle: insights gleaned from a flower-abundant spring garden that annually unveils its blooms.
Anne Olivieri's relentless pursuit of perfection is evident in the Morton Hall Tulip Festival, a breathtaking spectacle hosted annually in Worcestershire. With 7,500 tulips adorning the estate's grounds and 4,500 visitors expected during the early May Bank Holiday weekend, there's no room for error.
This fundraiser for the Royal Shakespeare Company, sponsored by Bloms Bulbs, demands show-stopping results, and Anne delivers by carefully orchestrating an harmonious color scheme. The South Garden features pastel shades of whites, pinks, and purples, while the Kitchen Garden bursts with hotter, more vibrant hues. Anne cleverly blends these aesthetics by adding Viridiflora tulips, like 'Spring Green' or 'Formosa', to enliven the pastel scheme, and by letting loose in the Kitchen Garden with a bold carnival of color.
Morton Hall boasts a garden full of interconnecting spaces, including formal areas, a kitchen garden, woodland walk, Japanese stroll garden, and meadow. Anne meticulously plots everything out on paper, placing each bulb by hand to ensure a flowing, naturalistic effect.
As spring approaches, the garden bursts into life, with the meadowland studded first with fritillaries and narcissi, then camassias at tulip time. Paths are mown through the grass, and an informal allée of Japanese cherry trees, Prunus 'Fragrant Cloud', with lovely white blossom that fades to pink, leads to a charming semi-formal woodland garden. The atmospheric Japanese Stroll Garden is a delight, with winding paths, ponds, stepping stones, and planted banks illuminated by emerging foliage, pulmonarias, camassias, and early thalictrums in the spring.
Visitors to the festival can also explore the South Garden, where pastel tulips take center stage. Space is deliberately left between the permanent structural planting for tulips, which are replaced with annuals such as echiums, Nicotiana, cosmos, and zinnias for color and interest right through until October. In the Kitchen Garden, the 'hot' tulips are backed up by the emerging foliage of heucheras, geums, and the early Iris 'Maui Moonlight', and, for summer color, the bulbs are replaced with tender salvias.
For those seeking to create a similar tulip display in their own gardens, Anne offers several tips:- Plan out your design on paper, and take pains to plant in natural drifts rather than blocks.- Add a Viridiflora, such as T. 'Spring Green' or T. 'Formosa', to add some zest to pastel schemes.- Use a mix of different shapes, such as peony-flowered and multi-headed tulips for impact, and lily-flowered ones for elegance.- Source big bulbs; choose ones that are size 12 or bigger.- Leave space for tulips in between your permanent planting of perennials, and replace the bulbs with hardy annuals in summer.- Improve your soil's drainage with regular applications of mulch; bulbs hate heavy, waterlogged clay.- Plant your bulbs as late as you can and take them out again after flowering, to help avoid fungal disease such as tulip fire.- Protect tulips from squirrel attack by scattering chilli powder on the soil after planting. Reapply after rain.
The Morton Hall Tulip Festival takes place from the 3rd to the 5th of May. Pre-booked tickets cost £15. The gardens are also open for groups by appointment from April to September and for the National Gardens Scheme (NGS) on August 23rd. For more information, visit mortonhallgardens.co.uk.
- Anne Olivieri's careful arrangement of colors in Morton Hall's gardens, such as the South Garden's pastel shades and the Kitchen Garden's vibrant hues, is part of her garden design approach.
- The garden spaces at Morton Hall, including formal areas, a kitchen garden, woodland walk, Japanese stroll garden, and meadow, are not only beautiful but also creatively planned with every bulb hand-placed for a naturalistic effect.
- To create a similar tulip display in one's home-and-garden, Anne recommends planning the design on paper, adding a Viridiflora tulip like 'Spring Green' or 'Formosa' to enliven pastel schemes, and considering shapes like peony-flowered and multi-headed tulips for impact.
- At the Morton Hall Tulip Festival, visitors can learn beneficial gardening tips, such as sourcing big bulbs (size 12 or bigger), leaving space for tulips in between perennials for summer hardy annuals, and improving soil drainage with regular mulch applications.
