Martin Duncan, the head gardener at Arundel Castle reflected on this year’s Tulip Festival. He said: “The tulip festivals has been fabulous. We've had huge turnouts, on the weekends we’ve had up to 3000 people a day and people have absolutely loved it. Even during the week, we've been having record numbers of sort of 1500 people, to 2000 on a Friday.
“That’s the joy about the Tulip Festival, it just brings so many smiles to people's faces. It's such a joy in the springtime to have that colour when you've been through winter. You can just enjoy over 120 different varieties of tulips we have, it's fabulous.
“It just looks stunning. I've got such a good team and I even bring in my tree surgeons to plant the higher banks because we have tulips going up the banks. We’re already planning for the next festival now. I'll be ordering 120,000 tulip bulbs already for next year.
“I do it early so I know we’ll get the best choice of tulips when they get delivered from Holland. The tulips come on a big truck and we take tractor loads up and down and it takes us about two hours to unload all the tulips!
“This year we are going to revamp our labyrinth of tulips which is going to be fantastic. So over 24,000 new tulips will go into the labyrinth and it will be the first-ever labyrinth of tulips in the world.”
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Martin Duncan, the head gardener at Arundel Castle. Photo: Henry Bryant