The tulip will be on the Flower Agenda throughout January

A new year, a new beginning. The tulip is ideal for welcoming in the new year with its brilliant colours and varied appearance. Consumers can read all about this classic at Funnyhowflowersdothat.co.uk. Introduce your customers to the pride of Holland!

The tulip’s origin

Tulips can be found in the wild from North Africa and Southern Europe across to north-west China, with the greatest diversity in three mountain ranges in Central Asia: the Pamir, the Tian Shan and the Hindu Kush. The climate here is ideal for tulips, with its cold winters, long springs with cold nights and dry summers. Tulips need cold nights and a cold winter in order to be able to grow, which means that they cannot be cultivated in a warm climate.

The tulip’s colours and shapes
The ever-cheerful tulip comes in white, red, yellow, pink, purple, orange, green or with multicoloured petals. The tulip’s shapes are also a feast for the eye. You can get them with a single or double row of petals, whilst there are also eye-catching fringed and parrot tulips with serrated petals, and there’s the playful lily-flowered tulip. Peony tulips look like peonies, and French tulips are exceptionally tall (unlike the average French mademoiselle) and have very large flowers.

Caring for tulips
With these care tips consumers can enjoy their tulips for 5 to 12 days:
•    Select a clean vase that’s tall enough: tulips will continue growing a few centimetres.
•    Add cut flower food to the water for a longer vase life.
•    Place the tulips in the vase for an hour wrapped in paper or film. The tulips will then suck up water and straighten up.
•    Use tap water at room temperature.
•    Trim the stems diagonally with a clean and sharp knife or secateurs.
•    Place the vase in a cool spot away from the fruit bowl and not in the sun.
•    Tulips drink a lot, so regularly top the vase up with tap water.

Tulip symbolism
If you gave someone a tulip in the sixteenth century, you were giving them a fortune.  In those days the flower was incredibly popular and a speculative trade in tulip bulbs developed. You could buy a whole canalside house in Amsterdam for the price of one tulip bulb in those days. A nice bunch of tulips now costs just a couple of pounds, but the symbolism has gained in value. If you give someone tulips, you’re giving them a message. Hence red tulips mean passionate love, and with black tulips you’re saying: “I love you so much that I will sacrifice everything for you.” So you don’t give those to just anybody.

Bouquet recipe with tulips
It’s grey, cold and dark outside. There are no more holidays in prospect, no sun to warm you and we’re sick and tired of commuting in the dark. Shed the downbeat mood with a spectacular tulip bouquet bursting with colour in order to shake everything up. 

What you need
•    Tulip
•    Hyacinth
•    Narcissus
•    Viburnum
•    Briza media (grass)

More about the tulip
Consumers can also find more information on Funnyhowflowersdothat.co.uk about the National Tulip Day which will take place on Saturday 21 January in Dam Square in Amsterdam. We’re also brightening Blue Monday with a bunch of blue tulips and we have Granny’s tips for keeping your tulips looking good as long as possible - in a special tulip vase, of course! 

Inspiration and information
Inspiring images of every flower in the Flower Agenda have been produced in line with the Horticulture Sector Trends 2017 (Groenbranche Trends 2017). These trends are a translation of the latest consumer trends and are specifically aimed at the horticulture sector for both indoor and outdoor use. If you would like to find out more about the Flower Agenda read more here