Tulips are one of the world’s most popular flowers, with over 2,500 varieties produced in the Netherlands each year. Featuring photography by Andrew Montgomery, the book showcases a unique collection of rare and covetable tulips at Blacklands, the beautiful English country garden of tulip expert Polly Nicholson.
Combining the flower’s rich cultural history with growing advice, Nicholson provides a comprehensive introduction to cultivating species, historic Dutch and English Florists’ tulips, and annual garden tulips. Featuring all types of tulip – from wild, species tulips to old Dutch cultivars, as well as English Florists’, and the ever popular annual garden tulips – she also offers modern context and sensible and practical advice for gardeners, based on her personal horticultural experience.
Bringing to life varieties that date back to the 16th century, Nicholson demonstrates how these treasured bulbs and more modern varieties of these enchanting spring flowers can be grown today – whether in herbaceous borders, naturalized in grass, in containers, gravel, meadow settings, or in the garden for cutting.
Polly Nicholson is a tulip specialist, keen environmentalist and the founder of Bayntun Flowers, a small organic flower farm in Wiltshire, southwest England. Passionate about tulips, she has been growing species, historic and annual garden varieties for over fifteen years and holds the National Collection of Tulipa (historic) with Plant Heritage. Nicholson grew up in the countryside near Bath and read English literature with medieval studies at the University of Exeter before obtaining a diploma in horticulture from the English Gardening School at Chelsea Physic Garden in 2003. Prior to establishing Bayntun Flowers, she was an antiquarian book specialist at Sotheby’s in London. Nicholson is an active member of Flowers from the Farm, a trustee of Benton End House & Garden in Suffolk and has acted as horticultural adviser for several Phaidon publications.
The Tulip Garden: Growing and Collecting Species, Rare and Annual Varieties (Phaidon) will be released on the 21st of March 2024.