“People think of tulips as perennials, but they’re not really, anymore,” says Arb senior gardener Aimee Thuen. “We consider them annuals. So, every year, a new display and color design gets planned. We cherish them for their short season, then we say goodbye when they’re done.”
That means even though the tulips bloom for just about four weeks (mid-April to mid-May, peaking around Mother’s Day, depending on the weather and snowpack), monitoring the Arb’s tulips is actually a full-time job. Throughout the summer, the gardening team researches new varieties and color schemes for all the tulip-adorned spaces on the grounds and then spends hundreds of hours planting bulbs in the fall before the ground freezes. They devote winter and early spring to protecting the precious bulbs and shoots—which are “like a salad bar for critters,” according to Thuen—by putting up deer fences and spraying an organic solution that makes them taste bitter to deer and rabbits. But it’s all worth it when Chaska suddenly looks like a scene from a postcard of Amsterdam and the promise of warm days returns.
108
Number of tulip varieties in this spring’s display, with a color scheme that includes citrusy oranges, yellows, and greens, plus a smattering of purples as a complement. “Green flowers are fairly rare,” senior gardener Aimee Thuen says. “But one of the varieties we’ll use, Green Mile, it’s green and yellow, and the petals open up a bit to be almost lily shaped.”
2005
Year tulips first became one of the Arboretum’s spring draws, coinciding with the opening of the Oswald Visitor Center and the current Annual Garden. In 2014, the tulips were endowed by Corrie Beck. The endowment supports the cost and planting of all the new bulbs.
100,000+
Approximate number of visitors who come from all around the state (and beyond) to see the tulips in bloom.
500
Hours it takes the 40-plus-person staff, plus dozens of volunteers, to plant the new bulbs each October.
40,000
Number of tulips that bloom each year—find 20,000 in the main Annual Garden space and the rest sprinkled among gardens near the Oswald Visitor Center, the gatehouse, and the Highway 5 entrance.
7,000
Space, in square feet, the tulips take up throughout the Arb’s grounds.
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