NCC 'tulip meter' touts best time to view annual display in capital

Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, left, shares a moment with Bill Black, president of the Korea Veterans Association National Capital Unit, following a tree planting ceremony on Saturday on the opening weekend of the Canadian Tulip Festival. Photo by ASHLEY FRASER /POSTMEDIA

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Tulips are a long-standing symbol of friendship between Canada and the Netherlands, but the spring-blooming plant also have an edgier and more scientific side, one that can help you best plan visits to the Canadian Tulip Festival.

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Tina Liu, a senior landscape architect, is part of a National Capital Commission team that has spent up to 18 months planning and executing the grand opening of the capital region’s much-awaited yearly festival, long before visitors laid eyes on the tulips on opening day, May 8.

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Those experts have mixed early-season, mid-season and late-season varieties of tulips in every tulip bed across the region to make the colourful displays last longer.

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This year’s festival is set to run until May 19, but Liu says tulips may be in full bloom all the way into the first week of June.

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Tina Liu, a senior landscape architect, is part of a National Capital Commission team that has spent up to 18 months planning and executing the grand opening of the capital region’s much-awaited yearly festival. Photo by Abyssinia Abebe /Postmedia

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On opening day, NCC’s “tulip meter,” which is a tool to help visitors time visits to the festival based on tulip growth, was at five on a scale of zero to 10.

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“Every day, we would see how (the tulips) do,” Liu said. “They start to sprout at level one, and, when they grow taller, you see the bulbs … The tulip buds coming out would be around three, and then, when you see that they start to bloom — which is the early-season tulip — that’d be level five.”

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The five out of 10 score may alarm some, especially on the first weekend of the tulip festival, but Liu said this was actually good news.

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“Level seven to eight would be when the mid- to late-season tulips start blooming. Level 10 would be when they will be done blooming,” she said.

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“The best time to see the tulips would be the second to third week of May, when most of them are in bloom.”

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The official opening of the Canadian Tulip Festival took place amid the colourful display of tulips at Commissioners Park in Ottawa on Saturday. Photo by ASHLEY FRASER /POSTMEDIA

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Just at Commissioners Park, near Dow’s Lake, there were more than 60 varieties of tulips for the first weekend of the festival. Among those who enjoyed them was Princess Margriet of the Netherlands.

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Margriet, the third child of Dutch Princess Juliana, was born at the Civic Hospital in Ottawa in 1943. The royal family had been offered safe haven in Canada after the the Netherlands was invaded during the Second World War.

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After the war, the Dutch people and Princess Juliana expressed their thanks for that and for Canada’s role in liberating their country by sending tulip bulbs to Canada’s capital.

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The first gift of 100,000 tulip bulbs was sent in 1945, and the tradition continues to this day, with the Dutch royal family now sending 10,000 bulbs to Ottawa annually.

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“People meet, connect and take joy in the beauty and in the spirit of togetherness they inspire,” Princess Margriet said Saturday.

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Just days earlier, on May 5, the Netherlands celebrated the 80th anniversary of its liberation from Nazi occupation.

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The princess thanked the Canadians who made the ultimate sacrifice and rest in Dutch soil.