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Lithuania and Flower Bulbs!

Lithuania and Flower Bulbs!

Lithuania and Flower Bulbs!
There are countries where flowers are a nice touch, and then there is Lithuania, where they are practically a language.

Spend any time here and you notice it quickly. Flowers appear at the door for a birthday, on a desk for a first day of school, in a hand on a first date. There are even quiet rules to it. You give an odd number of stems, always, because an even number is reserved for saying goodbye to those who have passed. A bouquet in Lithuania is never just a bouquet. It carries a message, and everyone understands how to read it.

Nowhere is this clearer than on the first of September. Knowledge Day marks the start of the school year, and on that morning the whole country seems to bloom at once. Children walk to school with bouquets almost as big as they are, gifts for their teachers, and every tram and pavement fills with colour. It is one of the most charming sights in the Baltic calendar, an entire nation carrying flowers on the same day.

When spring comes, that love finds its grandest stage at Burbiškis Manor in the north of the country. Set in a romantic park of some 28 hectares, laced with lakes, islands and long avenues of trees, the manor grounds erupt each spring into around 400 different varieties of tulips. Since the year 2000 the estate has held an annual Tulip Flowering Festival, and for a few weeks every May it becomes a place of pilgrimage. Families come, poets come, musicians come, and everyone wanders the same winding paths beneath the same impossible reds and yellows and pinks. It is not a trade fair or a garden show. It is simply a celebration of the flower, for its own sake, which feels very Lithuanian indeed.
The courtyard of Burbiškis Manor in the Radviliškis district of Lithuania in spring.Springtime in the courtyard of Burbiškis Manor, Radviliškis district.
There is something fitting about tulips taking this role. Lithuania's cool climate, long summer days and rich soil ask a great deal of a bulb, with dark winters and a short, urgent growing season. Yet a tulip that has weathered a northern winter comes up all the more brilliant for it, as though it has been saving itself for the occasion. In a country that greets spring with such open arms, you can understand why the tulip, first flower of the season, is so beloved.
And it is not only the great estates that celebrate it. When spring arrives, tulips brighten town squares and city centres across the country, ordinary streets turned briefly extraordinary. It is the same quiet devotion, simply closer to home.
Colourful tulips flowering in the city centre of Kaunas, Lithuania in spring.Tulips in bloom in the centre of Kaunas, Lithuania.

At DutchGrown, we find this quiet devotion to flowers rather wonderful, and we are proud to already be a small part of it. Every year we send our flower bulbs to many gardeners right across Lithuania, from city balconies in Vilnius to country gardens in the north, and we pack each one by hand with the same care. Whether you are filling a whole border or planting your very first pot, there is real joy in adding your own colour to a country that already knows the language of flowers so well.

Our tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and much more are ready to become part of your Lithuanian spring. Why not begin this autumn, and give the season something to look forward to?

Meet Ben, our Flower Bulb Specialist
Meet Ben, our Flower Bulb Specialist

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