We are heavily involved in judging for the FreeFrom Food Awards this week and as a result, my time on the heath has been strictly limited. So, since we are heading into tulip season, I though I would take you on a trip to Mainau Island on Lake Constanz where they have planted over a million tulip bulbs just on one long walkway.
The island, which is closed at the moment thanks to COVID, belongs to the Bernadotte family, the current count and countess being the great, great grandchildren of Grand Duke Frederick I, Lord of Mainau. However, it was the current family’s parents, Count Lennart and Countess Sonja who, in the 1970s and 80s, entirely redesigned what was then a rather overgrown island, turned it into a tulip paradise and opened it to the public. (Unfortunately, I cannot give you any more history as that section of their website is in German and my German is definitely not up to the task.) Anyhow, a tulip paradise it now is.
A few hundred thousand of them are planted in huge swathes of formal beds like these while other beds, although formal, are planted much more loosely than one would traditionally expect, tulips interplanted with a whole range of other flowers.
Elsewhere, patchworks of different coloured tulips underplant the trees.
Or larger blocks of single colour flowers like these white doubles are interplanted with delicate cow parsley.
Or how about this amazing peacock? Not tulips but pretty impressive.
More views of the Bernadotte’s gardens, including the orchard houses, next time..
Bursting buds
Love it!