We are so fortunate that Edith and Elizabeth kept amazing records of the Bulb Plantings they did at Gaiety Hollow.

This is the layout of the 1935 planting plan, and while many of those old varieties are no longer available, we do have the ability to make comparisons to modern selections and essentially recreate the garden at a point in time.

Tulipa ‘Yosemite’

The bulb planting plan for this season was based on the drawings from a 1956, the old cultivar of Tulip on the drawing, which was a cultivar from 1944 called Tulipa ‘Wilhelm Tell’, which interesting enough, got translated onto the planting plan as William Tell, is no longer available a similar rose colored selection was made and Tulipa ‘Yosemite’ does an outstanding job of shining above the brick.

Tulipa ‘Christmas Dream’

On the walk through the drying yard, Tulipa ‘Christmas Dream’ is a stand in for the 1956 choice of Tulipa ‘Pink Perfection’, which I couldn’t find a good reference to in the volumes that have been written on old tulips, there is mention of ‘Perfection’ and also a ‘Purple Perfection’.

It’s been buckets of rain here in the first week of April, with the Willamette River set to crest at a tiny bit below flood stage in Salem, but spilling it’s banks througout much of the Valley. Lot’s of the modern breeding work in tulips was done to produce strong stems that can stand up to the torrential downpours of April.

Best,
Mark