Tip Toe Through The Tulips

My first tulips in a couple of decades are blooming, and I can't get enough of seeing them!

Tip Toe Through The Tulips

For years I would pass by those bags of tulip bulbs and remind myself there was no point in feeding the beautiful flowers to my resident deer. This past fall, I splurged on a couple of bags of mixed color tulips after the flower beds attached to my driveway retaining wall were finished. I make bulb gardens out of tulips bulbs most years but its not the same as having the bulbs blooming in the garden for weeks in spring.

Designed to be practical as well as beautiful, the driveway retaining wall includes three levels of flower beds, each adding greenery as well as stability to the wall holding up the curved road into my property.

We actually followed the design of the old railroad tie retaining wall, adding a flower bed at the bottom where the tulips are now blooming.

 My builder was proud of his work until he showed photos to a couple of people who wondered why the walls are so short.

Why would you want taller walls, I said, this way we can easily see the flowers in bloom. If the wall was taller, you couldn't see much blooming and it would all feel hemmed in. Who wants to look at tulips half way up?

Most people are used to taller walls, he said, and they don't get the flat stones at the top.

One view of the tulips blooming in the flower bed that is part of my driveway retaining wall.

I like the flat stones. I can sit on the edge of the flower beds and enjoy the flowers, then I can also easily reach over and do some trimming, or add mulch. Or better yet, easily plant something. When I'm through, I can cut through the flower bed by walking on the flat stones from one side to the other. I can pretend, I said, that I was tip toeing through the tulips.

The view from the other side of the driveway retaining wall, tulips are pretty from both ends.

He just shook his head and smiled. My builder knows there is no such thing in my world as having too many flower beds.

And if that doesn't satisfy the people looking at the photos and wondering why someone wants flat stone walls, I said with a twinkle in my eye, just tell them your client is a goat. 

Charlotte