New Tulip Variety “Baptized” in NYC

By Jill Brooke

At what will become an annual event called Tulip Day, Consul General of The Kingdom of the Netherlands in New York, Ahmed Dadou, presented an exclusive New York tulip variety to the City of New York at Union Square Park.

“We are honoring our history, the Dutch history of New York and also looking at the future, and creating another 400 years of a beautiful relationship,” said Dadou.

Holding a champagne glass, Iris Rodriguez-Rosa, the City of New York’s enthusiastic Parks & Recreation First Deputy Commissioner then watered the new variety with some bubbly calling it a pleasure for New Yorkers to “baptize” this new variety, called Future 400.

Along with this new bloom, 200,000 tulips lined Union Square Park on a sunny day making it a beautiful sight for the public.  Holland Ridge Farms in New Jersey provided 100,000 of the 200,000 tulips and also has its own tulip festival next week. Van Hoekelen growers also contributed among others.

As Erik Lommerse, who runs the Nord Lommerse Flower Bulb Group in Holland explained, tulips unlike other flowers take over 20 years before the blooms are distributed en masse and matured. Or as Jeroen Bours, President of the Netherlands Club and the Founder of Darling Agency, pointed out, “a much longer wait than a good bagel at Zabar’s.”

But flowers are never in a rush and bloom when ready, confident in its ability to delight and inspire.

Now that this flower has been baptized, it will be on the top of the list in the flower bulb laboratories to be developed and distributed. It was grown by Remarkable Tulips.

Fans oohed and ahead and the vibrant dark orange color, the thickness of the stem and the long elegant tulips. In the future, when the crop is large enough, the tulip will be available throughout the season, which will make it a favored choice for cut tulip production.

The Future 400 is a perfect tulip for this city. You couldn’t have a flower named after New York that isn’t resilient, adaptable and strong – right?

“What a day, look at the happy people and the tulips,” added Lommerse, as he watched throngs of people – as many as 20,000 – peacefully gather the allotted 10 tulips to take home.

Royal Anthos, which represents Dutch companies that distribute bulbs around the globe, succeeded in creating a wonderful event that showcases the power of the flower to make people happy. The company did the same event in San Francisco.  In Dutch culture, flowers are nationally recognized for all their mental health benefits which is now finally being more understood in the United States.

Furthermore, these flowers on Tulip Day had a ripple effect. Yes, there are other tulips planted in the city and festivals,  but not with flowers given away with such generosity as this event.

Now these blooms were then seen all over the city as New York City residents walked the streets, visited stores, sat at restaurants and now will keep them in vases at home.

Jill Brooke is a former CNN correspondent, Post columnist, and editor-in-chief of Avenue and Travel Savvy magazine. She is an author and the editorial director of FPD and a contributor to Florists Review magazine. She also won the 2023 AIFD (American Institute of Floral Design.) Merit Award for showing how flowers impact history, news and culture

Photo: Flower Power Daily