Enjoy the Tulip Festival at Hever Castle and pick up some gardening tips by watching videos online
Be uplifted with a visual feast of spring colour with over 20,000 tulip bulbs proudly standing to attention in Hever’s Castle Online Tulip Festival.
Usually, at this time of the year, Hever Castle’s Head Gardener, Neil Miller is busy providing garden tours to visitors during Hever Castle’s annual Tulip Celebrations event. This year during lockdown he’s taking some time out of his busy gardening schedule to provide a virtual tulip tour of the gardens and some planting advice.
In a series of videos to be published on social media and on the Hever Castle website, Neil likens the choice of tulip varieties in the gardens to the experience of ‘being in a sweet shop with every colour under the sun’ available.
The epitome of elegance, the tulips at Hever Castle look spectacular planted en masse in the borders along the Pergola Walk. The Italian Garden plays host to the largest of the tulip planting displays with a kaleidoscope of colours fanning down the length of the gardens towards the Loggia and the lake. On the north side is the Pompeiian Wall which contains small bays showcasing antiquities in stone and marble surrounded by wonderful displays of tulips and bedding plants.
In an area usually reserved for Dahlias, there is a more uniform colour palette, more Gertrude Jekyll in style with its blocks of colour. Here Neil identifies his favourite tulips in the gardens as ‘Orca’, a deep fiery orange flower that resembles a peony, and ‘Mondial’ which is an unusual white and green variety.
Neil goes on to describe how tulips are just as happy in pots and planters as they are in open spaces and so can be grown by many. In examples of planters at Hever Castle he highlights the tulip ‘Helmer’ which Neil likens to an Olympic flame.
The Hever Castle garden team continue to maintain the 125 acres and are working to bring the gardens to life with this series of virtual garden tours, gardening tips and some insight into their much-loved of the garden and favourite plants.
Hever Castle will also be sharing pictures and videos on social media so that everyone can stay connected and enjoy the history of the castle and the beauty of nature and our gardens from afar.
To watch an example of the Hever Castle videos click on this picture below:
