Tulips are ‘the teenagers of the flower industry’
Tulips are ‘the teenagers of the flower industry’
“Mid the sharp, short emerald wheat, scarce risen three fingers well. The wild tulip at end of its tube, blows out its great red bell . . .” ~ Robert Browning, British poet (1806-1861).
“Tulips have a mind of their own in designs,” Rita Peters, director of floral at Hy-Vee in West Des Moines, IA, told The Produce News. “They open quickly and will continue to ‘grow.’ They are great for unstructured garden designs.”
Every floral designer with whom I spoke shared that same sentiment. “All tulips, whatever species, have a mind of their own and that’s what I like about them,” said Pieter M. Landman, owner at Blooming Vision BV in the Netherlands. “They grow the direction you won’t expect and they stretch their stem to get at least two inches taller than when purchased.”
Karen Bertelsen, Canadian television personality, states in her “The Art of Doing Stuff“ blog, “After years of trying to tame the terrible tulip, I finally came to embrace its tendency to droop, squirm and bend. And now, I actually prefer for my tulips to have a mind of their own.”
Most designers compensate for tulips’ unpredictability by placing them deeper inside arrangements and leaving them room to grow, pairing them with greens and fillers to stabilize them, or simply placing them by themselves in a vase. “It’s been pretty popular lately for weddings to just have tulips by themselves; straight tulips,” said Cindy Overland, floral manager at Hy-Vee in Albert Lea, MN. “Bridal bouquets with several tulips, different colors together, have been popular.”
So, as Jay Schwanke, floral designer, teaches in his uBloom.com blog:
“You don’t have to work hard when you’re working with a bunch of tulips. I personally pick up two bunches, I grab those tulips and I put them in water and I’m done,” said Schwanke. “It’s so easy because tulips are the ‘teenagers of the flower industry’ — they do exactly what they want, whenever they want to.”
In other words, tulips definitely have a mind of their own.