What a Tulip Can Do — If You Ask It

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

It was chill winter in the Midwest, but thoroughly spring in the San Francisco Bay Area earlier this month when local floral designers, professional and amateur, demonstrated what a tulip can do — if you ask it nicely.

The event was the11th Annual Tulip Exhibition  at the Tower Chapel of Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.

Howard J. Arendtson of H Julien Designs in nearby Berkeley, put his blossoms inside glass

fish bowls. There, the succulent tulip stems curved obligingly, rounding themselves against the inside surfaces of the glass.

For her “Eruption,” Ellen Kim put extra long-stemmed flowers into a vase and let the stems stretch and explode into space. For her design, Susan Cohn clipped her stems short and tucked them into a flat container, which gave visitors an intimate view of the blossoms from above. And during a demonstration on Sunday, Agnes Kang showed how a flower arrangement can be held in place by poking stems through holes drilled through miniature logs.