'Heartbreaking': Floriade's gardeners are scrambling to beat the heat as Canberra's spring comes early

Floriade is two weeks away, but try telling the flowers that.

Canberra’s balmy day-time temperatures over the past week have clearly tricked the bulbs into thinking it’s spring already.

The hyacinths and daffodils have already entered full bloom now, and gardeners are having to spray the beds with water to cool the soil and keep the other varieties from popping up too early.

“It’s heartbreaking to see,” head gardener Tim Howard says.

“So some strategies we’ve employed – we’re keeping the moisture up, misting and running the irrigation system as frequently as we can, really just to drop the soil temperature down.”

Canberra’s recent day-time maximum temperatures have ranged from 17 to 21 degrees Celsius, where ideally, “under 15 would be wonderful”.

“But it’s also the night temperatures too, so if the warmth continues overnight and then during the day as well, it’s like ripening a piece of fruit – it accelerates.”

The work on this year’s show began back in December last year when the bulbs arrived. Each of the 470,000 bulbs and 540,000 annuals are then planted from March by gardeners on their hands and knees and working through rain and shine, wind and frost.

There are three types of tulips grown at Floriade – early, mid and late-flowering varieties – to ensure there’s always something to see for the full four weeks of the show, warm start or not.

“The portions of the show that are flowering now are the early bulbs … but we’ve got all these understory flowers yet to come through,” Tim says.

There’s more.

In the three years since Tim took on the role as head gardener, he’s “not seen the gardens look this healthy”.

“The big pro to the weather is that all our annuals are looking exceptionally colourful.

“We’ve done a lot of work this year building on last year’s show – around our fertiliser program and plant nutrition – to get our annuals bigger and more colourful, and these have never looked better. The weather’s been great for them – more roots, more leaves, more flowers.”

This year’s theme of ‘Art in Bloom’ includes a flower bed made out in the pattern of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, a design challenge like no other.

“If you misinterpret the drawing, or your calculations aren’t correct, you’ve suddenly made one section much larger than the other and you’re going to run out of bulbs or run out of a certain colour,” he explains.

“It’s like writing a happy-birthday sign, and you’re like, ‘I know how big the letters are, I don’t need to sketch this out’.”

He says it’s definitely been worth it, though.

“I was pushing the designers this year for more colour contrast between the flowering varieties for extra eye punch.”

Floriade 2024 at Commonwealth Park opens to visitors on Saturday, 14 September, and ends with the Great Bulb Dig Day on Monday, 13 October.

Nighfest returns for four nights from 3 to 6 October, with its “exciting program of after-dark entertainment and horticultural illuminations”.

Tim recommends the opening weekend and first two weeks as the best time for those travelling from interstate to see the displays.

“If you’re a Canberran, come see it every week because it’s going to look different each time.”