News Analysis India

Tag: Tulip garden

  • Tireless toil for a year to make tulips bloom

    Express News Service

    SRINAGAR:  Since Asia’s largest tulip garden opened this Wednesday, visitors have been flocking to recreate scenes from Bollywood films, taking selfies amid long rows of flowers beds.

    To give them this aesthetic pleasure, a team of 110 persons round the year to make 1.5 million flowers bloom in the garden that is spread over 20 acres on the foothills of the Zabarwan range.

    About 2.25 lakh people visited the garden last year despite the Covid wave. Assistant Floriculture Officer, Tulip Garden, Inam-ul-Rehman said about 110 people, including 60 gardeners and casual labourers, work in the garden. 

    One of the gardeners, who has been working for the last 15 years, said, “We have to put in the hard work for 11 months to make the one-month show successful. We hope that people in large numbers will visit. We feel proud when tourists come to see tulips and click pictures and make videos.”

    Another gardener who has been working for four years said they plant the tulip bulbs as per the variety of its bloom.

    “We have early, mid and late varieties of tulips. We plant them accordingly to keep the garden open for a month and allow the visitors to see tulips of different colours and varieties in full bloom. The carpet of flowers of different colours truly gives the feeling of paradise,” he said.

    The opening of the tulip garden signals the arrival of spring in Kashmir.

    “Tulips needs low temperature for survival. If the temperature during the bloom increases, then we have to irrigate the garden with care without hurting the flower. We have to irrigate at night. We cannot spray water on the flowers or else they will get damaged,” said a labourer.

    A lot of planning goes into designing of different sections of the garden.

    “Tulips of different colours are planted. If we feel that the colour combination does not match, then we change it next year,” he said.

  • Huge tourist inflow caused COVID-19 cases spike in Jammu & Kashmir

    Express News Service
    SRINAGAR: While it was the campaign extravaganza that triggered a case surge in poll-bound states, in Jammu and Kashmir, a huge tourist inflow enamoured by the famed Tulip garden led to 20.34 per cent spike in Kashmir and 26 per cent rise in Srinagar between March 25 and April 25.

    On the day Asia’s biggest Tulip garden in Srinagar was thrown open to public (March 25) after a lockdown-induced hiatus, the Valley registered 131, including Srinagar’s 65 fresh cases. The active case tally in the Valley at that time was 1,209, while Srinagar had only 747. 

    During the one-month period between March 25 and April 25, the Tulip garden registered 2.30 lakh footfalls, including 80,000 outstation tourists. By April 25, when all paid parks, including Tulip garden, were closed, Kashmir’s tally had risen from 76,658 to 96,237 cases, registering an addition of 19,579 cases and accounting for 20.34 per cent of the total cases recorded in the Valley.

    Further, the positivity rate in Srinagar rose 26 per cent between March 25 and April 25, with it adding 10,447 fresh cases to its tally in a month. The city recorded its highest addition of 748 cases on April 25. The Valley recorded 82 deaths during the period, of which 41 were from Srinagar district alone.  

    The doctors and civil society members have attributed the surge in COVID cases to the opening of the gardens.

    Doctors Association Kashmir president and influenza expert, Dr Nisar-ul-Hassan, said: “The authorities kept the gardens open and thousands thronged the gardens daily and it could have been a factor for the surge in the Valley and the eventual rise in hospitalisation and death, too.”