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Spalding on parade

Spalding is preparing to welcome up to 100,000 visitors, coming for the town’s annual Tulip Parade

Words: Judy Theobald   Pictures: South Holland District Council

 

 

For almost fifty years, thousands of people have descended on Spalding each May to enjoy the annual flower parade, although events to mark this annual crop have gone on for much longer than that.

 

Spalding’s tulip-centred celebrations started unofficially in the 1920s when a trickle, and then a stream of visitors came to look round the tulip fields each year during what was to become ‘Tulip Week’. By 1935 the narrow lanes became so congested with cars and coaches, a one-way route was devised to take the traffic on a twenty-five mile route around the fields.

 

In 1950, Tulip Week became Tulip Time and took place over three weekends, a committee was formed and a Tulip Queen appointed. Together with her attendants, she paraded around the tulip fields in a garlanded open hearse.

 

It was at this time that Francis Hanson, a local farmer, came up with another idea. “I’d been to Holland to see the Dutch tulip parade which was very spectacular so I went to see Leo Van Geest and told him I didn’t think it right that our Tulip Queen should go round in a hearse. He agreed and brought in a Dutch designer to decorate a special float for her with tulips.” Thus the annual tulip parade began.

 

Tulip heads have to be removed to produce a strong bulb. However, the downturn of this was that the growers would strip the flower heads off and in a day reduce a formerly bright and vivid field into a field of steams and foliage. However, it was discovered that the flower heads would keep their colour for several days and would be ideal for decorating floats.

 

The floats are created by welding a frame over an old-fashioned tractor. The frames are covered with a base of polyethylene foam onto which the flower heads are pinned. A small space is always left in the design for the tractor driver to look through.

 

Over the years the parade has expanded and still attracts between 80,000 to 100,000 visitors to the town. Nowadays it is organised by the Spalding Flower Parade and Carnival Trust with a committee headed by David Norton. It’s a major job which involves bringing a whole range of people and organisations together – sponsors, designers and welders, people who fix the flowers to the floats, schools, stewards, the police and the 700 participants of whom 400 are children.

 

Each year’s theme is decided before the previous year’s parade has even taken place – this year it’s Planet Earth and next year, the fiftieth anniversary of the parade, it’s Thanks for the Memory. Planning starts in earnest in September and October when sponsors are contacted, work starts on the safety plan and the designer, Jacquie Barnes starts creating the designs for a range of floats based around the theme of the parade. Local and national companies are then shown the designs and asked if they would like to become sponsors.

 

Once the sponsors are on board, over the winter months the welders prepare the frames for the floats which are then covered with the special foam. In the last two days before the parade, teams of workers and volunteers, around 150 people in all, work twelve-hour days, pinning each individual flower head onto the float to create the finished design. Tulips are the only flower used – half a million of them – and the green effects are created with laurel leaves.

 

David said: “There are two critical elements here - will the tulips be ready and will there be enough of them. Changes in climate and the reducing number of growers in the area mean there are fewer blooms available.

 

“This is quite a critical time. Everything has to be ready by six o’clock on the Saturday morning, the day of the parade.

 

“As parade organiser I have to have an overall view of what is going on, deal with support services, design and construction, marketing and promotion and, most important, deal with the people who are involved such as stewards, marshals and drivers and each one of them may have a particular question that needs answering. It’s not like a business with a hierarchy of supervision and management, there are only one or two people who can answer these questions and I’m one of them,” he said.

 

Another problem is the weather. “We watch the weather forecasts obsessively in the days leading up to the parade. On the first year, I went on a float myself, dressed as a gnome. It was a bright, sunny day and at the end of it I had a bright red face where I had caught the sun but the rest of me was white.”

 

On other years it can be cold and wet and people taking part in the parade are warned to be prepared for all weathers.

 

The parade takes place on the first day – this year Saturday, 5th May, with the floats setting off from Springfields at 2pm accompanied by a team of ‘clowns’ from the local Lions and Rotary clubs who will be collecting for charity. The parade is immediately followed by the Parade Carnival in which 300 adults and children from local schools and youth groups will be taking part. Everyone will finish at the Sir Halley Stewart Field.

 

Visitors to the Springfields Festival Site can also enjoy a range of entertainment, exhibits, craft stalls and a tulip art exhibition. Monday is ‘nostalgia’ day, looking at the 1940s and 1950s.

 

Local churches also create added attractions by holding their flower festivals during the same weekend.

 

It costs £200,000 to put on the parade; some of this comes from the float sponsors, some from the gate entry to Springfields and South Holland District Council also supports the event by contributing time and materials.

 

And when the final visitor has gone home and the last float is dismantled, can David go home and put his feet up? Unfortunately not: “There are thank you letters to be written and bills to pay but I can usually take some time off about three weeks afterwards.”

 

And when he comes back, it’s on with the show for 2008.