Tulip Top: Sutton/Bywong, AUSTRALIA

At this time of the year, there is a pretty large flower display in Canberra known as Floriade. This is situated in Commonwealth Park, near the centre of the Civic area. However, there is a rival flower show just over the border in NSW... heading out of Canberra on the way to Sydney, just before the now full Lake George.

Tulip Top is the rival show... and I had seen it being advertised with a single sign on the motorway between Canberra and Sydney on my many drives up and down that very familiar stretch of road. The show is only open for a few weeks, and I had meant to take my whole family there as soon as as we had a chance in the holidays!

Unfortunately, when my wife and I were working our strange jobs... our extended family took our kids there! And so, they got to experience the whole flower show without us! But... that was a sort of blessing in disguise, as my wife and I could just visit the display without kids in tow... and this day, we dropped them off to school, and then forsook our own gardening for a few hours to come and wander amongst the beautiful garden beds.

Sadly, we should have come nearer to the start of the opening... but we were quite busy during that time (hence, the extended family looking after our kids on a weekend!). There were many beds of tulips that had already reached the end of their display life, and they were cut down already. Interestingly enough, we had done something similar with the big flower display in the Netherlands, the Kuekenhof.... when we had waited until my mother had arrived, and thus had missed the best display window!

Despite not quite hitting the best time for viewing, we did still find the place quite amazing... and it is still astounding that it was just tucked away off the motorway, completely out of sight and a secret to many travellers!

Both my wife and I managed to get some ideas for our own garden... although, we will prefer to have a mostly native garden, we will still want to have a few "outsiders" in there... especially the tulips from our old adopted second home!