Good news and the Hill Billy Tulip Festival

Yes, we start today with the good news; the Tulips , Daffodils and other spring flowering bulbs are available again in the Fluwel webshop. For the first time, you can now order spring flowering bulbs at the same time as the summer flowering bulbs.


Tulip Beauty Trend

Yes, we will try it once. The saying goes 'when there is music, you must dance' and when the bulb fields are in full bloom there is music. A lot of people come to ask if all that beauty is for sale, hence the idea to open a month earlier than you are used to from us. Please note, it is pre-sale, the spring flowering bulbs that you order now will be delivered in October. A big advantage is that you can order a few more Dahlias in the coming weeks for direct delivery. The Dahlias will be delivered immediately and you only pay shipping costs once.

Narcissus Queen of the North

For customers who are crazy about the latest introductions, perhaps the tip is to wait a little longer. If I come across nice things this spring, I will of course add them to the store. I will let you know when the assortment is complete, which will be around the end of May I think.


But first I want to tell you what I experienced last week, that is much more fun than trying to sell bulbs to you via this Sunday newsletter. I don't like that and I also find it a bit difficult. Telling you what I experience during the week is much, much more fun and much easier. And I also have the idea that a story that is fun to write is also much more fun for you to read. If there is anything useful to report in the future, I will mention it at the end of the housekeeping announcements.

So this week: The Hill Billy Tulip Festival.


“Would you like to be a 'speaker' at our Tulip Festival?” I suddenly read in an email from our American customer Baker Creek (and April 10, during Easter. No, of course not was my first thought, then our Daffodils are in bloom, then I really won't go!!)

But yes, if I keep saying that my whole life, I thought later, then I will never see how our bulbs end up and that is of course not nice either. In addition, Baker Creek planted 100 bulbs of all the Tulips that we offer in the Fluwel webshop last year, it would be nice to see them in bloom. After some deliberation I said yes. On the plane to Chicago, wait six hours, and in a small airplane on to Springfield Missouri. I know, you have never heard of it, but it really exists. That is also funny, when you travel and you say that you come from the Netherlands, Amsterdam everyone says 'oh nice, I want to go there too' and often a story about how beautiful they thought it was when they were there. But if you say that you are going to Springfield, you get the reaction Springfield, where is that?


Tulip Wild Romance

That's where I had to go and then drive another hour in a direction where almost nobody lives anymore. Beautiful, radio on Radio Ozarks, listening to non-stop country music, cruise control at 60 mph, and chugging along on an empty highway, right through the Ozarks. The Ozarks are a mountain area literally in the middle of the US. Vast, empty, beautiful and with incredibly nice people who proudly call themselves Hill Billy. No nonsense people, both feet on the ground, fingers in the mud and get going. Working for each other and with each other and when there is something to celebrate: partying. Wonderful people, nothing wrong with that.


'Mansfield Cabins, Carlos, that's where you're going, I've reserved a Cabin for you', Lisa's email read. Mansfield; a gas station, a Dollar Tree supermarket, a few houses and a T-junction and nothing else really. Oh yes, a tire repair garage, but that's about it. For the Cabins I had to turn left at the T-junction, out of the village, left over the hill and hey, there's nothing here anyway? So I took the gravel path and lo and behold, there's a house. Luckily, there's someone walking there. I was on the right track, it was Jeff, the owner of the Cabins. Follow me, and after driving another kilometer on the gravel paths through the bush, we arrived at the cabins.

Narcissus Sizzling Fire

Beautiful, right in the middle of the sticks (that's what they call trees in America; sticks). "We have various stinging and biting insects in the country" was written on the instructions for the cabin :-). Absolutely fine, in the middle of nowhere, that will be a good night's sleep. In the evening the music of a full orchestra of hundreds of crickets accompanied by many other forest sounds, fantastic. The next day early to Baker Creek, I thought I could have a chat with this and that. The drive there was just as extraordinary as the drive to the cabin. You see an arrow with Baker Creek village and Tulip Festival once where you neatly turn off and just when you have actually been thinking for a while 'I'm wrong, I'm going to turn the wheels around' you suddenly see a number of tunnel greenhouses, a nursery and as a big surprise thousands of your own Daffodils in full bloom along the roadsides.


There was no time for a quick chat, dozens of stallholders were busy displaying their wares and the first visitors were already arriving. A few hours later, over 3,000 cars were parked in the meadows around Baker Creek Village.
Village? Yes, at Baker Creek they have renovated a lifelike wild western village. Around a square are the authentic houses of the baker, the blacksmith, etc. In the middle of all this is a square with a kind of checkerboard pattern, the tile garden, with all our Tulips planted in it. Unbelievably beautiful. And what people, all enjoying the Tulips to the fullest.


At 1 o'clock I had to give a lecture and when I walked into the tent where this was to happen, at least 400 people were waiting expectantly on a stand of straw bales for me. I am not an experienced speaker, I said at the beginning of my lecture, and I had never expected to stand in front of so many people, 'so you scare the shit out of me'. That was met with hearty laughter and before I knew it the hour was over.

Narcissus Popeye

What is nice to share with you, is that during this trip I discovered how little I actually know about flower bulbs and how they behave. Yes, I know how flower bulbs behave in Holland, but there in Central America… and therefore probably also in some southern areas of Europe, bulbs behave completely differently. After such a long cold winter, the, in my opinion, late-flowering Daffodils bloom there, almost at the same time as the Daffodils , which I would say bloom two weeks earlier. Two days is the difference in flowering time there. An early-flowering Daffodil like Popeye blooms there at the same time as the very late-flowering Daffodil April Queen .


I have also seen things with the tulips that I had thought were impossible. Shirley Double, a tulip that in my eyes really is a late bloomer, was blooming at the same time as the early bloomer Salmon Impression and Lady van Eyk.

In retrospect, I am very happy that I said yes to this warm invitation. I have seen with my own eyes that all those beautiful stories of mine about flowering times and properties become very different if you live a bit further away or a bit higher in the mountains. After such a lecture, this is also confirmed by the various passionate gardeners and landscapers who come to talk to you afterwards. Not only a difference in flowering time, but also large differences in height and color. The brightly colored Narcissus Precocious will never become as dark in color there as in regions where the light intensity is a lot higher and the temperature a lot warmer than here in our cold frog country. What is the same is that the species that naturalize well here also appear to do very well there. In order to really find out, we are going to plant a large number of Narcissi at Baker Creek on the grounds next year, 100 bulbs of each type, to see which species really do best in the warmer south.

Narcissus Precocious

Funny actually, while I'm writing a large part of this story, I'm sitting at a bar at O'Hare airport in Chicago. Handsome man behind the bar with a big moustache who jokes with Tom, Dick and Harry, nice older lady next to me who advises me to try a Pinot Noire from California and a piano. You know, one of those empty pianos that just stands there and invites you to play it. And yes, a young man takes a seat and plays me a bit of atmosphere in the place. Wonderful, everyone is happy. The bar is an open bar, just stuck to the wall of a busy corridor at the airport so everyone walks past it. Not anymore, everyone stays to enjoy the cheerful Boogie Woogie tunes on the piano. Wine and a notebook to write in, can it be even better...

Kind regards,
Carlos van der Veek.

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