by Diane Sagers
CORRESPONDENT
Spring flowers are perhaps the most welcome of all the blossoms in the landscape. They emerge to dot the landscape with bits of color here and there or if planted accordingly they provide a flood of vibrant hues to greet the cool spring air.
The bright bobbing heads of daffodils, tulips, hyacinths and other spring bulbs are the harbingers of spring. These flowers with their biennial counterparts like pansies and wallflowers are brave enough to counter the unsettled weather of spring with its warm days, cool nights, errant snowstorms and freezing conditions.
They do have weather-related triggers, however, so they have not arrived as early as usual this year. Spring weather has been about three weeks late. The daffodils and earliest tulips are finished, but mid- and late-season varieties are still coming. We may be ready for a dose of balmy weather, but the continued cool, unsettled weather is good news for the spring bulbs. Warm weather hastens their maturity and demise, while cool weather encourages them to linger longer.
This is a nice time to check out the bulbs you see in various gardens to get ideas for your own. Some of the display gardens in the area like Temple Square have a massive display. Although they do not label their bulbs, you can still get ideas for color and plant combinations that work well to make spectacular shows.
Keep in mind that darker colors like blue and purple tend to recede, while the brighter colors of orange and yellow tend to stand out. The purples and blues make excellent background contrasts for orange, red and yellow flowers. Mix them to create a stunning sight. Lower growing flowers in blue, like the pansies, literally form a background that lasts after the tulips have waned.
Many people wonder how they get such big tulip blooms in these display gardens. Some are large enough to put your fist inside. The secret is simple -- they plant big bulbs. Big bulbs produce big blossoms.
The bulbs are removed for summer planting and allowed to finish the course in a shady area. This is not ideal, as the bulbs fare better if left in the ground with the greenery left in place until it dies back, but the seasons must roll on.
Some of the bulbs are saved and mixed in other areas of the garden in the fall while others are ground for compost. New bulbs are purchased each year for prominent beds. Although new bulbs can be expensive, the flower show they provide is worth it and the labor required to sort and store the bulbs from this spring's show is more expensive than purchasing bulbs.
Even in chilly weather, blossoms are short-lived so as you choose bulbs, purchase a few early-blooming, a few mid-season and a few late varieties. The later ones will come up as the earlier ones fade, extending the season and continually changing the look of the garden beds. This is a good time to make purchases from bulb catalogs, while the effects you have found are fresh in your mind. The bulbs are not available right now, but the flower bulb companies will typically send you the appropriate bulbs when the time for planting is right for this area.
Holland is equated with tulips, America has its own Holland in the Skagit Valley (pronounced skæd' jit) of Washington State. The climate in Skagit Valley is compatible with growing spring bulbs of all kinds.
This area can rightly claim the Holland of America status because they actually produce more bulbs there than the country of Holland does. The bulbs they grow in the Skagit Valley are also accurately sold as Holland bulbs because the growers are originally from that country and many of the bulb varieties originated there. If you buy Dutch or Holland bulbs, they may well have come from Skagit Valley.
Roozengaarde and the Washington Bulb Company are run by the Roozen family. This is the largest tulip, daffodil and iris growing business in the entire world, covering more than 1,200 acres with field blooms and 15 more acres with greenhouses. They also farm about 2,000 acres.
Each fall they ship bulbs to thousands of homes across the United States and Canada and provide fresh-cut flowers for purchase or shipment anywhere in the U.S. year-round.
The company also has a retail store surrounded by a three-acre display garden named Roozengaarde (Dutch for Roozen's Garden). This relatively small plot is covered with more than 200,000 spring-flowering bulbs to provide a gorgeous display of color and to give home gardeners ideas for their own yards.
The family came to America in 1947 bringing a tulip heritage with them. The original owner, William Roozen (which means "roses" in Dutch) came from a family that began raising tulips in Holland in the mid-1700s and that occupation has passed through six generations.
Roozen worked for other farmers in America for three years before setting out on his own in 1950 with a five-acre plot to grow bulbs. Five years later, he purchased the Washington Bulb Company.
Along with the growth from five acres to the largest tulip-bulb grower in the country, Roozengaarde is one of the largest employers in the Skagit Valley and the area and flower industry are very important to the county's economy.
Each spring, Skagit Valley hosts a spring tulip festival from April 1st to the 30th with the Washington Bulb Company as a key sponsor. I suspect that the festival's origins were partially in self-defense. As the bulbs bloom, it creates a spectacular show and hundreds of thousands of people flock to the area to see the brilliant fields of bloom. Traffic can be a problem, particularly for farmers who need to get equipment to their fields, but through the festival, routes are planned to see the fields and other events help offset the congestion and capitalize on the tourist trade. Maps are put online to show where the best color is at on any given day.
The color is spectacular, but at some point the farmers clip off the still-attractive flowers. Producing blossoms and progressing toward setting seeds uses energy. By clipping off the blooms, the energy the leaves produce is forced to the bulbs to grow them bigger. That is what the consumer -- whether or not he knows it -- wants. Most farmers are willing to leave the flowers on for a time so that visitors can enjoy the color.
Our weather comes from somewhere, often the northwest. As in Utah, the spring season there has been delayed this year and the blossoms appeared later than usual. Although the festival is nearly over, the flower show is not. When I visited the Skagit Valley last week, the daffodil fields still showed good color although they were waning. The tulip fields were opening up with full color and the vista of rows upon rows of vividly colored tulips was spectacular.
Our garden tour group had a local Master Gardener guide to escort our bus around the fields. She does this regularly and is well aware of where the best views are located as the season progresses. Visiting the right fields is important since not all the fields are filled with bulbs and not all are in bloom at the same time. Go just after the flowers are cut off, and you will find acres of tulip leaves with not a flower to be found.
In addition, the farmers must rotate the crops on a three- to five-year basis to avoid disease problems. In intermediate years, they may plant grasses or potatoes or other crops. This procedure, careful cultivation and nurturing and variety choice means growing large, beautiful bulbs that produce flowers large enough to put your fist inside.