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REPUBLICA PRESS
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Are There More Tulips Than Usual This Year?

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At a time of global investment mania, New Yorkers can’t seem to get enough of one of the world’s oldest speculative assets. They’re not buying, though. Just admiring.

“Stunned today by the masses of beautiful tulips blooming all over the Upper East Side, and glad we can appreciate them as flowers rather than the bitcoin of 1636,” the filmmaker Whit Stillman wrote in a message on Twitter after posting a photo of a bright yellow tulip bed on Park Avenue.

Indeed, many people have noted and documented the flowers sprouting from medians, sidewalk planters, parks and gardens around the city.

“I think they absolutely look more stunning than I have recalled in years,” Olivia Rose, the owner of a plant design studio, wrote in an email about the tulips she has observed on First Avenue near the United Nations building. “Taking tulip strolls has been a daily activity. I think the street beds in the last five years have gotten a lot better in general.”

actress and a host of the podcast “Red Scare,” wrote in a message on Instagram. “They definitely seemed abundant and caused me to reflect with gratitude on the attention and care with which someone planted them.”

languishing, New York is flourishing. More so than usual?

Matthew Morrow, the director of horticulture for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, said in an interview that the city planted the same number of tulip bulbs as it does most years: approximately 110,000 citywide.

demand for tulips plummeted as events were canceled and flower shops closed their doors all over the world. One Dutch grower said in an interview with the CBC that his company threw away a billion flowers. But over the course of last year, “sales were up quite a bit,” said Jan Doornbosch, a tulip importer who runs the International Bulb Company. “That goes for the entire gardening industry.”

Dimitri Gatanas, the owner of Urban Garden Center in Manhattan, said that plants and bulbs of all sorts were flying off shelves amid the year’s “planting craze.”

Liza Franquinha, the branding and events director for Crest Garden Center in Williamsburg, wrote in an email: “In 2020 we had a lot more requests from independent community groups for garden supplies. I think people are using public spaces more and want them to be beautiful, and are going out and doing rogue planting.”

many people failed to see a man in a gorilla suit walking through a video scene in which they were instructed to watch people playing with basketballs. “The thing about the gorilla is many people don’t notice it,” he said. “But then once they do, it’s kind of hard to take your attention off of it.”

annual tulip festival at the West Side Community Garden in Manhattan pondered the link between emotional states and perceptual capacity while soaking in the flowers, nearly 100 varieties in all, planted in concentric beds around a small lawn.

“Everything is just more beautiful after going through this horrible year,” said Monica Barrett, a real estate appraiser and environmental activist, gesturing at a patch of tulips striped in psychedelic scarlet, yellow and orange hues. “Looking at these, they’re hypnotizing. It’s almost like I’m high!”

Judy Disla, a retiree and volunteer at the festival, said: “I’ve seen more all around the city. I think we just appreciate these things so much more now.”

Last year the garden was locked during tulip season as a pandemic precaution, but she still dropped by to look at the flowers through the gate. “We’ve all become a little more attached to nature than we were,” Ms. Disla said. “It’s just made us so much more cognizant of the beauty of nature and the healing power of nature.”

Judy Robinson, the president of the garden’s board of directors, described how people have been telling her and others that they’ve been waiting for this all year: “‘Through this horrible year, the garden has really been sustaining me, and you don’t know how much this means to me.’” She added, “People are so, so happy.”

Dozens circulated through the garden over a weekday afternoon, gazing in rapture at the jewel-toned blooms. At one point, attention shifted from flowers to phones as news of the Derek Chauvin verdict broke.

“It’s an ecstatic moment,” an older man said to a friend, as helicopters soared above. Soon enough, faces turned back to the flowers, which were swaying gently in the breeze.

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