My experiment with botanical tulips seems to work out nicely.

I know, it’s easy to say in the first year, tulips always come up the first season. The more interesting question is: will they be showing up again next year. Obviously, I can not tell. So I have to resort to liking what I have now: lots of tulips, this time all of the botanical variety. It wasn’t easy to find bulbs suiting my colour scheme at all. Botanical tulips usually come in yellows or reds.

But I found three, that were pink or white and blue. Or so they were shown on the pictures coming with the bulbs.I kept them this time, just to remember, what I have planted, so they still sit right here on my desk and I can show you.

However, Maria Christina (the middle) turns out to be many colours, rather than the soft white and pink promised on the label.

But not to worry – the flowers are still pretty. They just have to move to a different part of what I call “my” garden. In fact I will move them over to the public stretch of green next to the road, that I have already conquered with climber roses, an apple tree and sunflowers around the street lamp post. This post will have a Maria Christina fringe come next spring (and come Maria Christina, again). For my front garden main patch, it is too meddlesome, I think. Can’t be helped this season, though. At least people are stopped in their tracks, when they walk by, flashed with the bright colours.

The other two tulips are absolutely lovely. “Albert Heijn”, a Fosteriana, is an elegant, tall tulip with a lovely shade of pink leaning toward the hue, dark magnolias show.

And the tiny tulips “Alba Coerulea Oculata” are so cute, they have become my favourites this season, with their dark eye (or heart as their name suggests) fading into the purest white of petals. This tulip is only 15 cm high, but it lifts my spirit every time I walk past it.