I went to Floriade today, for the third time this weekend (well, the first time I just walked past and peered through the fence…) and it is looking glorious and very, very colourful.
But. There are big patches in the beds where there are no tulips and not that much in the way of other flowers. As those of you who have frequented Floriade over the years may recall, the usual manner of planting the beds is to have loads of tulips with an underplanting, often of pansies, in a similar colour so as to reinforce the effect of the big block of colour. So one would expect that even if the tulips hadn’t yet come out, there would still be some colour other than the brown of the garden beds. Not this year.
As luck would have it, on my visit yesterday I was accompanied by someone who knows one of the people who worked on planting the beds. Apparently what happened was that all the big, heavy rains we’ve had just lately combined with the use of a sandier soil than previously meant large chunks of the garden beds just plain washed away. And had to be hurriedly replanted with whatever was available to try and fill in the gaps (tulips taking an inconveniently long time to grow).
It’s really rather sad, since what has remained is simply marvellous. But such are the excitements of working on weather-exposed projects.
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