I started with a few pots of tulips by the front door. A few years later, we were planting a mixture of 300 bulbs. Somewhere along the way, I seem to have become rather interested in gardening.
It happened around the same time as having children. Perhaps there’s something in growing and nurturing things, combined with slowing down a little and staying in one place—or perhaps, having upgraded the garden, I simply had somewhere more special to make the most of.
At the front of our house is an old, built-in shallow stone planter. It was almost empty, and I really wanted to see what we could do with it. Our front door faces north, so I wasn’t sure whether there would be enough sunlight for tulips to flower fully. Before committing to planting it up, I tried bulbs in plastic pots in the space one year.
They did rather well, with little glimmers of sunshine filtering through the acer trees. That gave me the confidence to go a little further the following year: a mixture of 300 bulbs. It was quite a show.
Preparing the planter took a little more work than expected. We’re talking broken glass bottles and bits of pipes—I suspect builders somewhere along the way had been tipping things into it. I cleared it out, turned the soil and replenished it with fresh compost to give the bulbs their best chance.
Once I’d prepared the soil, the boys helped with the planting, placing the bulbs on top, spacing them out and making sure they were the right way up, of course. I then covered them with soil and took charge of the squirrel deterrents. The planting was a family effort; keeping everything where we’d put it required a little more intervention.
I quickly learnt that chilli powder wasn’t enough for our determined squirrels, so I moved on to metal chicken wire. After cutting my hands a few too many times during that particular learning curve, I switched to plastic mesh. Then came the question of timing: leave it too long and the emerging shoots could catch in it, losing their tips as they grew; remove it too early and the squirrels had a feast. Honestly, it was all rather stressful.
You’ll find a sprinkling of photographs here of our gardening pursuits and the flowers that followed. There’s something particularly satisfying about seeing a display grow from bulbs you’ve planted together, even if much of the work happens months before there’s anything to admire.
As the display came to a close, I snipped the last remaining flower heads to decorate our Easter table for a family meal. You’ll see them in the photographs, arranged on our vintage Irish Linen table runner with its yellow stripes—a final flourish before the season was over.
And, of course, we visited the Tulip Festival at Glenarm Castle to see the real deal, spotting Lady Antrim admiring the blooms herself.
Our little linen Tulips grew out of that affection for the flower, alongside the inspiration of the Tulip Festival at Glenarm Castle, who commissioned us to create a bespoke ornament. I launched the design in 2023, and it has since appeared in a growing palette of coloured Irish Linens, followed by our more elaborate Sparkly Gold Tulip.
The garden display has its season, but our linen flowers can continue to blossom throughout the year.
Katie xox
