Tulips

Readers, be forewarned: "The Tulip" may just start tulipomania all over again. Its author, famed British garden writer, Anna Pavord, laughs good-naturedly at the accusation. "I certainly hope so," she says. "That's exactly what I had in mind."Pavord, who is speaking at Ladew Topiary Gardens on Tuesday, not only glories in her own obsession with the flower, but also entices the reader along in her new book, "The Tulip: The Story of a Flower That Has Made Men Mad." This is a definitive and wonderfully enjoyable history of the tulip, exploring the sweet malady of tulipomania when and wherever it has occurred, accompanied by exquisite color plates throughout.

flowerpower; it's tulip timeMaybe you and your friends are crazy for Beanie Babies. More than 400 years ago in Holland (the Netherlands), people went crazy for tulips.People paid big prices for these spring-flowering bulbs in the early 1600s - so much so that the craze for tulips got the name "tulipomania."Europeans picked up and expanded the popularity of tulips. Dutch settlers arriving in the United States brought tulips with them by 1640.Today, tulips are among the most popular and colorful of all spring flowers.

Do you have any information on "Tulip Time" in Holland, Mich.?The 1998 Tulip Time Festival will run May 7-16, timed to coincide with the top tulip-blooming season. Up to 1,000 tour buses head to Holland every year for this event.Holland, a small city that celebrated its 150th anniversary last year, was founded in 1847 by a band of Dutch immigrants. The tulip tradition began in 1929 when 100,000 bulbs bought from the Netherlands bloomed and the city invited visitors to come and see the flowers.

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.

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."

There is a wonderful way to add life and color to your home during the late winter months, even though the snow may be thick outside and spring weeks away. This easy process is called forcing flowers for indoor bloom.Most spring blooming bulbs adapt well to forcing, but some are )) more reliable and less fussy than others. The best of the smaller bulbs are Dutch crocus and snow crocus, Siberian squill, wood hyacinths, anemone blandas and grape hyacinths. These can all be transplanted out into the flower bed in spring while their leaves are still green.

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.

"BE SURE TO put the root side down,'' I told Jinsong, the young Chinese student who was helping my husband and me plant tulips in our garden. ''When I was a child I thought that if we planted bulbs upside down the tulips would come up in China,'' I told him.He smiled and said when he goes back to Beijing he will plant a lot of tulip bulbs upside down. ''And they will bloom in your garden.''My husband laughed but I did not. For him this was a bit of happy nonsense, quickly forgotten. But for me it triggered a set of reminders of how the tulip has acquired its mystique among gardeners -- and others -- around the world.

I would like to take a barge trip through the Netherlands in April or May, so that the trip would include the tulip gardens. Can you name any tour companies?A number of companies can book a barging trip to the Netherlands at tulip time:* The Barge Lady, 101 W. Grand Ave., Suite 200, Chicago, Ill. 60610; (800) 880-0071.* Abercrombie & Kent, 1520 Kensington Road, Suite 212, Oak Brook, Ill. 60521; (800) 323-7308.* Le Boat, 215 Union St., Hackensack, N.J. 07601; (800) 922-0291.* European Waterways, 140 E. 56th St., Suite 4C, New York, N.Y. 10022; (800)

Tulips were the inspiration for the interior design of a bedroom addition at Lorna and David Taylor's Baltimore County home. When interior designer Pamela Kostmayer found the Clarence House unglazed chintz in a tulip motif, she knew she had found the perfect fabric."