Tulips

HAVRE DE GRACE -- During the mania of tulip speculation that swept Holland in the 1630s, the rights to a bulb named Viceroy were sold for goods including six loads of grain, four oxen, eight hogs, 12 sheep, two hogsheads of wine, four barrels of beer, half a ton of cheese and a silver tankard.It must have been a pretty flower, and I wonder about it a little now as I dig in the damp November ground near the house, getting ready to plant a couple of dozen tulip bulbs of my own. Tulip prices have fallen somewhat over the last 360 years, fortunately.

Gardens were filled with tulips. Dogwood blossoms and tender new shoots were mulched. Windows glistened, tables glowed and chandeliers glittered in the April sun. Guilford homeowners were ready for the visitors who would come during the Guilford edition of the 75th Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage on April 28 - the kickoff to the upscale community's year-long centennial celebration. And come the visitors did - 1,973 tickets were sold. While they were admiring those houses and gardens, proceeds from the pilgrimage tour were helping to ensure another year of beauty in nearby Sherwood Gardens, where 80,000 tulips were in full bloom Sunday.

Dispirited by the frigid temperatures? Desperate for spring? Try this antidote to the winter blues: tulips. Check out almost any florist, garden center or even supermarket right now, and you're likely to see these cheerful blossoms in cut-flower bouquets or growing in pots. January through April is prime season for such potted bulbs as tulips, hyacinths and daffodils, which are forced into bloom early to please the winter-weary. It's easy to see their appeal. Just look out a window anywhere there's a pot of colorful tulips sitting on the sill.

An historic Anne Arundel County estate known as Tulip Hill was sold at auction this month to a mystery buyer for more than $2.37 million, according to Concierge Auctions, the New York-based company that handled the sale. The Colonial mansion in Harwood was listed for sale at one point for $7.5 million but the price dropped to $2.375 million before it was auctioned off on Saturday. Concierge representatives declined to disclose the name of the successful bidder or give the exact sale price, but they said the property sold for more than $2.375 million to a retired "senior military officer" who has restored another historic estate in the area.

Trendy is not the first word that springs to mind when you mention bulbs. Yet, flowering bulbs go in and out of fashion just as miniskirts and platform shoes do. For example, streak-petaled Rembrandt tulips were the hottest new thing in the early 1600s. Tastemakers paid the equivalent of thousands of dollars for a single bulb. They now cost about $1 each. Though the cost of flowering bulbs has gone way down and the number of varieties way up, the yen for the newest / hippest thing is unchanged.

Fast approaching the moment flower-lovers live for all year, the city's Sherwood Gardens -- and its 80,000 tulips -- is about to become a rhapsody in bloom."

A Menton tulip is the prima ballerina of its family, its lush, waxy petals the color of a ballet slipper. It grows waist high and its stem resembles a performer's long limbs. And when it covers the banks of a pond filled with swans, its pink reflection dances on the water, creating an almost impressionist illusion.Of all the stunning varieties of tulips growing in Holland's Keukenhof Garden last spring, the statuesque Menton stole my heart. But it had lots of competition. Like a Dutch version of the Garden of Eden, Keukenhof boasts a cliche-defying display of premium tulips, along with select azaleas, hyacinths and other blooms, which are planted amid 80 acres of lush greenery every year.

A stroll through Guilford's Sherwood Gardens on a warmish, sun-splashed spring afternoon is a perfect restorative from the cares and worries of the day - and a wonderful way to celebrate Earth Day. It seems to be the one place where even cell phone-addicted junkies gladly ditch their seemingly indispensable electronic appendages to take in the beautifully maintained gardens with their rows of colorful blooming tulips and daffodils. Azaleas, dogwoods and boxwoods, evergreens, ornamental trees and other curiosities are also to be found within this majestic 6 1/2 -acre - hard to believe - urban garden.

Bulbs are the backbone of the spring garden. From the earliest snow crocus peeking shyly out from under a mulch of leaves on a late February afternoon to the luminous beauty of a Darwin tulip like 'Blushing Lady,' it is a rare property that does not celebrate the end of winter by looking forward to crocuses, daffodils and tulips.But why stop there?A wealth of other, lesser-known flowers also exist to populate the springtime. The astonishing variety of bulbs, corms and rhizomes can lend additional personality and pizazz to your garden, as well as an extended blooming season.

NEW YORK -- Ten blocks away from the acrid air of ground zero's smoking ruins, a host of volunteers placed tulip bulbs in Battery Park yesterday in remembrance of the thousands who lost their lives in the World Trade Center attack two months ago. These Orange Emperors, just a small part of the more than 1 million bulbs -- mainly daffodils -- given to New York by The Netherlands, arrived on a container ship last month. The gift, meant to lift morale and decorate spring in the city, resulted in an impromptu, monthlong daffodil project, attracting about 7,300 volunteers.

I once spent a fall weekend planting 150 tulip bulbs, and not a single one emerged in the spring. Talk tulips with gardeners, and you will hear this kind of tale often. Plant them, and the dinner bell rings for deer, squirrels and chipmunks, rabbits, mice, moles and voles. There are ways to confound the critters that dig up tulip bulbs, or tunnel to them, and consume them for the winter energy they need, and those methods include everything from guns and poison to wire cages and stinky sprays.

A stroll through Guilford's Sherwood Gardens on a warmish, sun-splashed spring afternoon is a perfect restorative from the cares and worries of the day - and a wonderful way to celebrate Earth Day. It seems to be the one place where even cell phone-addicted junkies gladly ditch their seemingly indispensable electronic appendages to take in the beautifully maintained gardens with their rows of colorful blooming tulips and daffodils. Azaleas, dogwoods and boxwoods, evergreens, ornamental trees and other curiosities are also to be found within this majestic 6 1/2 -acre - hard to believe - urban garden.

The grand architecture, the history and the location put Tulip Hill, the 18th-century Georgian manor, on the National Historic Landmark list. Taking the name from its towering tulip poplars and its location on a rise in Harwood, Tulip Hill is considered one of the most distinguished early Georgian southern manor homes anywhere. Its five-part design makes for an impressive approach by land and water. The main hallway's M-shaped archway that looks like twin shells and the front view of the brick home with a cherub above the front door are featured in home history books.

John Payne arrived at 6:30 a.m. - half an hour early - to set up, only to gaze upon the "Sooners," who were already filling plastic bags, wagons and buckets with tulip bulbs. The early birds have become as much a tradition as the annual excavation in Sherwood Gardens in Baltimore. "A lot of these are repeat people," said Payne, a volunteer with the Guilford Association, which sponsors the dig. "They start coming at dawn." By 7 a.m.

Not everything is coming up tulips at Guilford's famed Sherwood Gardens. Sure, there are plenty of flower beds for visitors to enjoy - dazzling displays of pinks, reds, yellows, purples and blazing oranges. But something is different. Unlike any previous tulip season at this 6-plus-acre urban oasis, two beds lay bare and many more are sparsely blooming. Maybe 25 percent to 30 percent of the 70,000 tulips planted last fall didn't come up correctly, estimates Bruce Barnett, a Guilford Association board member who oversees Sherwood Gardens.

A sylvan sliver in the unlikeliest of places, an urban luxury once criticized as a former mayor's extravagance and then neglected for much of its nearly 100-year existence, Baltimore's Preston Gardens is finally getting its due. The garden in the middle of St. Paul Street - which would more accurately be described as the city's fanciest median - is slated for a nearly $900,000 overhaul. The effort would not only restore the park to its former glory, but improve on it with a flourishing landscape, working fountains and better lighting - all in the hope that the hard-luck plot can become a real downtown park.

Tulips (above) and hydrangea petals (below) soak up sunlight at the Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory and Botanic Gardens of Baltimore. At left, horticulturist Sandy Reagan guides an Easter Lily toward the light.

Gardens were filled with tulips. Dogwood blossoms and tender new shoots were mulched. Windows glistened, tables glowed and chandeliers glittered in the April sun. Guilford homeowners were ready for the visitors who would come during the Guilford edition of the 75th Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage on April 28 - the kickoff to the upscale community's year-long centennial celebration. And come the visitors did - 1,973 tickets were sold. While they were admiring those houses and gardens, proceeds from the pilgrimage tour were helping to ensure another year of beauty in nearby Sherwood Gardens, where 80,000 tulips were in full bloom Sunday.

Jacqueline van der Kloet has a refreshing way of planting tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and other spring-flowering bulbs: Forget about old-fashioned sweeps of red or yellow and concentrate instead on striking accents, echoing patterns and brilliant little pools of color. Van der Kloet, a Dutch garden designer, developed her style in her own garden in the small town of Weesp and then planted her ideas at Keukenhof, the famous garden in Lisse, in the Netherlands, where hundreds of thousands of bulbs bloom from March through May. Her "inspiration gardens" at Keukenhof are designed to bring great design ideas down to the scale of people's backyards.