How to Pick Lasting Tulips (And Keep Them Fresh)

There are a couple of picked constants in life– essential domestic items that become our anchors, and even beacons, to hold us quick or to draw us forward within the unforeseeable currents of individual or public occasions. These items are various for everybody, naturally. For me, they are books (constantly), and, in late winter season, a weekly sheaf of tulips, purchased from a regional deli, their buds specifically closed, their leaves squeaking with freshness. They are basic, dependable, and gratifyingly lasting. Their kind and shape developing voluptuously as days pass, an enjoyment in its own right. Seeing the flowers in the space where you work, sleep, or cook is a little however powerful tip that charm exists.

Here’s how to select, and to keep, tulips fresh. And: Did you understand that tulips are edible?

Photography by Marie Viljoen.

Above: Tulips outside Food Train, a corner shop in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Budget friendly city tulips’ instant origins are modest: In New york city it is the ultimate corner shop, purveying fresh fruit and vegetables, groceries, sandwiches, life fundamentals, and, typically, cut flowers. In January or February tulips appear, flown in from Holland or trucked under-or-over the Hudson River from where they grow in covered tunnels in New Jersey. In containers on the pathway, they remain fresh in the cold air and thin winter season light.

Above: A deli’s double tulips, 3 days after purchase, atop *Ethiopia*, by Yohanis Gebreyesus.

Constants being constants, and routines needing repeating, my picked tulip vase is (practically) constantly the exact same– one I discovered in a scrap store in Adams Morgan, Washington, DC, when I was a brand-new immigrant to the United States. Seeing it, filled with flowers, informs me my own story, rapidly.

However these charming flowers operate in any vessel.

Above: Hot colors in South African Woodstock glass. *The Approach of Curry*, by Sejal Sukhadwala. *The Orphan Masters Child*, by Adam Johnson.

Above: Warm windowsill tulips in beach-combed cobalt glass.

Whether the tulips are long-stemmed or sliced short, jam containers, old bottles, and thrift shop discovers work completely.

Above: Flowers and books fit. ( *Tomorrow’s Gardens*, by Stephen Orr.)

How to select tulips: Counterintuitively, tulips that reveal the least color will last the longest. They will likewise be securely closed. Back house, in their vase, they will establish whatever their saturated color is predestined to be, and their flowers will likewise continue to grow bigger, opening gradually in the light and heat of the space you select to position them. Tulips purchased in tight bud and offered sufficient water needs to last a minimum of a week, or longer, if you follow some additional tips.