Planting tulips in the Cherry Orchard
This autumn, Alnwick’s gardeners have taken delivery of 187 500 tulips. This is the first batch in a rolling planting programme of 600,000 tulips in the Cherry Orchard.
All the tulips are of the same variety, called Mistress; a large pink tulip that flowers from the middle of April to the middle of May. This November, the tulips are being planted throughout the Cherry Orchard, to create a carpet of pink under a canopy of white cherry blossom each spring.
The bulbs are being planted through the existing grass, and the gardeners are trialling a new method of machine-planting. The machine takes out a core of soil and leaves a planting hole into which a bulb can be dropped before top-dressing with soil. It is hoped the machine can cope with the sloped terrain, or all 187 500 tulips will be planted by hand!