Tulips = Happiness

For the folks behind TulipsFXBG, it's a simple equation.

by Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT

All across Fredericksburg, some 200,000 tulips are getting ready to blanket the city with springtime color.

For the folks behind TulipsFXBG and the volunteers who planted thousands of bulbs last fall, the anticipation is almost as good as the display itself.

Last spring's tulip bloom. Photos by Brent Brady and Janice Olsen.

“If you’re lucky enough to spend an afternoon planting bulbs, now that enjoyment phase starts in November,” said Tim Hughes, one of the organizers of the community effort to plant tulips around town. “You just have to get a shovel in someone’s hand.” 

What started as a small group of neighbors beautifying each other’s homes has grown into a city-wide celebration of springtime and community.

“Three years ago, I thought this would be more challenging than it is,” said Brent Brady, the other main “tulip guy.” “Now, I really think we could do one million tulips. We’re getting there.”

Neither Hughes nor Brady would say they are gardeners. It’s really just about the tulips and the simple fact that their only job is to be beautiful, Hughes said.

“I don’t have a burning drive to plant flowers, but I do connect to the happiness [a tulip] brings,” he said. “The tulips are in charge. They have an energy of their own. That’s been my experience.”

The tulip operation grew organically from Hughes’s wife asking him to plant some bulbs in the yard of their house on lower Caroline Street. Neighbors then asked him to plant at their homes and in the fall of 2019, he decided he would try to plant bulbs at all 43 houses on lower Caroline.

Then in March of 2020 the tulips bloomed, and the world shut down. For a community struggling with isolation, and mourning the loss of “normal life,” the tulips were a balm—and that’s when it became crystal clear to Hughes that “tulips=happiness.”

Thanks to donations from friends and neighbors and especially from Bloomia—the Dutch-owned producers of fresh cut flowers based in King George County which donates thousands of wholesale bulbs—TulipsFXBG has been able to plant more and more bulbs each year.

To supplement the donated bulbs from Bloomia—90,000 this year—Hughes orders bulbs from Colorblends, a wholesale bulb company out of Connecticut, with an eye for how the color of the plantings will progress from house to house.

“I call it painting with invisible ink,” he said.

Last fall, volunteers planted 120,000 bulbs and thanks to repeat blooms from previous years’ plantings, Brady and Hughes expect more than 200,000 tulips to bloom this year.

Peak bloom this year is timed to coincide with Virginia’s Historic Garden Week and especially with the garden tour of lower Caroline Street taking place on April 23.

Bulb planting took place in November and December. Thousands of bulbs went into the ground on Prince Edward Street from end to end, on lower Caroline Street, on Washington Avenue down to the canal path, on William Street and Hanover Street, at Downtown Greens at the intersection of Charles and Dixon streets, and at the entrance to the Mayfield neighborhood off Dixon Street.

In upcoming years, Hughes and Brady would like to plant bulbs in Idlewild, Normandy Village, College Heights, and the Canal Quarter. They can’t walk around town without seeing a patch of ground they’d like to fill with tulips.

Hughes said the foliage that’s coming up now is looking especially strong and healthy, and he expects this year’s bloom to be the best yet.

But it wasn’t the bloom that hooked Brady. It was the act of planting bulbs with Hughes one fall and watching the effect that digging in the dirt had on his 14-year-old daughter, who had been troubled by anxiety.

As she tucked tulip bulbs into the earth and let the soil sift through her fingers, Brady could see her anxiety melt away.

“I’ll never forget the day I experienced that with her,” he said. “It was like a lightbulb went off in my head.”

The tulips also bring neighbors together.

“I’ve met a lot of people I never would have met otherwise, and the sad thing is they only live two or three doors down,” Brady said.

Hughes recalls going door to door one year with bags of bulbs. At one house, a woman who was clearly uncomfortable interacting with strangers opened the door by just a crack. Hughes asked if she’d like a bag of bulbs to plant, and she told him, “Not this year.”

But as he as turning to leave, she asked “What color are those?”

“Purple,” he responded.

“Oh, well I’ll take purple ones,” the woman said.

As Hughes said, “If the tulips want it, it’s going to happen.”

Follow TulipsFXBG on Facebook or Instagram to learn how to contribute.

Volunteers planted tulip bulbs around town last fall. Photos by Wes Wiberg.

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