The Thing About Tulips
Personal Perspective: A flowery metaphor captures the hope and joy of springtime.
Posted March 24, 2025 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley
A small lot of dirt rested next to my childhood home. Growing up, most years, my father and I would plant tulip bulbs. Small holes in the earth turned to florid nature.
Tulips are perennial flowers, meaning that they usually come back year after year. They are notorious for needing little tending to. In a sense, they are immortal. They leap from the ground with bells of color. Tulips are dotted with doors and windows of strong and delicate petals.
Flowers have often been utilized symbolically throughout time and culture. The vibrant red roses represent love. Sunflowers carry a glow of happiness in their sunshine faces.
With a rebirth each year after the harsh winter weather releases, tulips symbolize new beginnings. In horticulture therapy , sometimes flowers pull someone back to the moment with symbolism and newfound meanings. Out of the dirt, these lovely beings burst. Tulips are usually first planted in the fall, and planting tulips in the fall and celebrating their emergence in the spring has been a mainstay intervention in horticulture therapy (Stein, 0215).
It has been several years since I last saw that once-garden of my childhood. It has turned to mostly grass.
This winter, my father received a diagnosis of cancer.
Over the weekend, I picked up some tulip bulbs. A few have begun to show flowers, while others have yet to sprout.
I placed the plants in plastic containers on the stone near my home. I'm not ready to commit them to the ground. It's too early in the year to promise that a frost won't come.
As the cold turns to warmth, the leaves return to the trees, and the sun shines longer each day, the tulips will blossom. These are harbingers of hope, peace with uncertainty, and a dawn of new possibilities after darkness.
Watering the tulips gives me a splash of joy each day in appreciating what is and what I dream of. Their red and white petals look somehow particularly innocent. The tulips know nothing of human life. Their cycle is driven by the clocks of nature in their all-knowing mystery.
Though it's a small act, planting flowers and cultivating their growth can be surprisingly therapeutic. You don't have to be in a horticulture therapy program to benefit.
I don't know what the future holds, yet I am thankful .
As we approach spring, I hope these thoughts about tulips may remind us of simple beauty and fresh starts, perhaps more than once.
That's the thing about tulips. They keep coming back.
Stein, L. K. (2014). Horticultural therapy in residential long-term care: applications from research on health, aging, and institutional life. In Horticultural Therapy and the Older Adult Population (pp. 107-124). Routledge.
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Jennifer Gerlach, LCSW, is a psychotherapist based in Southern Illinois who specializes in psychosis, mood disorders, and young adult mental health.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.