Fairhope tulips get frazzled

If you’ve been hoping to grab a glimpse of the colorful tulips planted at various locations around Fairhope, the bad news is that most of the tulips City of Fairhope horticulture crews planted about a week and a half ago got wiped out by last week’s unseasonably warm weather. The good news is: The people who work in the horticulture division of Public Works knew this might happen and were ready for it. New tulips are already being planted. City crew members work at a flower bed along S Mobile St today, removing stressed tulips and planting new ones. Tulips, it turns out, thrive in cold weather. They love temperatures in the 40s and 50s. But when temperatures rise well into the 60s like last week, not so much. Many tulips couldn’t take the “tulip heatwave.” Given the Gulf coast’s changeable weather, the City keeps a large reserve of tulip bulbs on hand for this very reason. “It’s happened before,” a crew member tells me. There are so many flowers involved–around 2500 tulips at this spot alone–that it takes time to replace all the bulbs. Crews plan to work on the flower clock intersection Monday. How long until we see color again in the flower beds? Probably not long. Tulips are among bulbs that start growing as soon as they’re planted. A member of the horticulture crew says we might even see color showing up again in Fairhope flower beds in as little as a few days…