By Margaret S. Hamilton
“Tulip
Mania” happens April 1-30th every year at the Cincinnati Zoo, when
the display beds are filled with 100,000 blooming tulips. Red and yellow tulips
bloom first, followed by other hues: white, purple, and pink. A million
daffodils, hyacinths, flowering bushes and trees planted on the grounds augment
the tulip festival.
The Cincinnati Zoo opened in 1875, the second-oldest zoo in the United States, on
its original sixty-five-acre campus near the current University of Cincinnati, UC
medical campus, and the EPA. The Cincinnati Opera performed in an outdoor
pavilion at the Zoo from 1920-1971, before the annual productions moved downtown to Music Hall.
The
Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden participates in both animal conservation
programs and an extensive plant program, including specialty gardens within the
zoo (butterfly, conifer, pollinator, and rain gardens) and a propagation
program for endangered plant species. Bowyer Farm, north of the city, is a
reclaimed twenty-four-acre wetland serving as a bird migration stopover and
growing facility for native plants.
The first
week of May, the tulip bulbs are dug up and sold for replanting in home gardens
in the fall, and the display beds filled with bedding plants.
Readers
and writers, does your community have a special spring flower display?
Wow. Such gorgeous tulips. Tulips are my favorite flower, so thanks for starting off my day with splendor.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Margaret, for the lovely photos of the tulips. My husband and daughters planted 100 tulip bulbs, and they bloomed beautifully--to the delight of the deer that gobbled them up as soon as they bloomed. No more tulips. Fortunately, the deer don't eat our daffodils.
ReplyDeleteHaving lived for a decade in the Clifton area of Cincinnati, I’ve been to the Cincinnati Zoo many times and enjoyed the flowers.
ReplyDeleteThe Rochester, NY area where I grew up celebrates the Lilac Festival, which features Highland Park with a gazillion lilac bushes in bloom and the air scented with sweet perfume.
Susan, glad you enjoyed the photos.
ReplyDeleteJim, the Zoo is in the midst of a huge building project but the Tulip Festival happened between chain link construction fencing. The lilac festival must be heaven.
ReplyDeleteGrace, sorry to learn about your tulip planting. I know rodent cages exist to protect the bulbs from chipmunks and squirrels, but nothing but serious fencing will protect the tulip stems and leaves once they emerge. I had a massed tulip planting in northern Ohio reduced to nothing but hoof prints in the dirt overnight. Deer raid!
ReplyDeleteDaffodils are toxic to deer, chipmunks, and squirrels and now offer enough variety in their extended bloom times to replace tulips. Which reminds me, it's time to coat the daylilies in deer repellent. It never ends, does it?
Gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteThanks Warren. What's blooming in your area?
ReplyDeleteBreath taking pictures, Margaret. I swear I could smell them. Here on the Outer Banks, we have few flowering plants except for some cactus type of flower around the dunes in the summer. Unfortunately, the plant also has a nasty thistle, which pricks everyone's feet. They are miserable. People have planted flowers in their gardens, but we mainly have foliage--oleander, forsythia, and myrtle. I'm always astounded at the beauty when I go to the mainland in the spring. But the mainland doesn't have the beach!
ReplyDeleteElaine, seaside gardens are tricky. I planted several for my mother on Cape Cod, always starting with a truckload of topsoil and peat moss. Plant nurseries sell "salt spray" hardy plants. On the Cape, the dunes had beach plums and poison ivy. The marshes had beautiful marsh mallow blooms.
ReplyDeleteWhat wonderful pictures. (I especially like the gorilla.)
ReplyDeleteOur spring blossoms are well past. We have lots of daffodils (the deer leave them alone--tulip displays end up with healthy stems, each with the tulip flower neatly bitten off) along a utility cut on the edge of our property. Astilbe are fading, and the fairy roses are coming into their own.
Does deer repellent work on daylilies? I've resigned myself over the years to losing most of the buds to deer.
Thanks for posting, Kathleen. I found a spray bottle of rabbit and deer repellent in the garage so I guess I used it other years on the daylilies.
ReplyDelete