A ‘wonderful way’ to kick off the garden season

This bank holiday weekend, if you are taking a trip to Glenarm, you may be forgiven for thinking you are in the Netherlands rather than County Antrim.

Glenarm Castle and Walled Gardens is awash with floral colour for its annual Tulip Festival.

The head gardener, Jordan McWhirter, told BBC News NI that the preparation for the festival starts in Autumn.

“We plan what our displays are going to be like, we get in touch with Bloms (supplier), we have different borders with certain colour schemes for each border. A hot border is all warm colours and different white borders,” he said.

This initial planning stage then allows for the logistics to be thought out.

“We can think, what are we needing quantity ways in bulbs, colour schemes and flowering times as well.

“We get our bulbs in around Christmas through to the first week of January and we will be planting right through the Christmas holidays,” he explained.

Then it is a waiting game, watching for any flowers that are not “show quality.”

“It’s a wonderful way to kick off our garden season. To have the garden awash with colour,” Lady Antrim, who lives in the estate and oversees the garden, told BBC News NI.

“It seamlessly goes into our summer planting.”

Lady Antrim explained that she approached a 165-year-old company, which has a long-standing history and tradition in the world of horticulture, about 20 years ago.

“They’re a wonderful Chelsea Flower Show award winning bulb company, I approached them because I know that they do other tulip festivals across the UK. I said that we would love to do something similar here, because it is a great way to quick of the season. All the great colour.

“There are not that many things that are flowering at this time of year,” she added.

The garden had just started to be open to the public around this time, Lady Antrim said: “At that moment they didn’t have anything in Ireland, so they were keen to get involved.

“We have been building on it ever since. It has turned into a lovely weekend family festival.”

This year will also see a pre-show involved in the festival for people who want to come in “peace and quiet” and have a look around the garden.

On the days of the festival there will be events for families.

Lady Antrim said there are at least 60 varieties this year

“I think the team plants around 9,000 in total,” she added.

She said it was a “really big job” over the winter months.

“You have to look out for the odd pest and we do lose a few along the way.”

According to the National Trust, almost half of the 120 known tulip species are native to central Asia.

They thrive in extreme hot summers and harsh, cold winters. Tulips were a powerful emblem for nomadic people and a welcome sign of spring.

By the 14th Century, wild tulips were being taken and planted in Ottoman palace gardens. It’s likely that ambassadors and envoys from Western Europe first saw them in these gardens.

There’s no record of when the first tulip left Asia, but its scarcity and beauty led to a huge desire for tulips in 17th-Century Europe, particularly in France and most famously, the Netherlands.