I am pretty sure you will have heard of tulip fever – the period in the 17th century when people went completely crazy for tulips, and single bulbs could exchange hands for the price of a house.

There’s a book and a film by that name too by Deborah Moggach. What is less well known is that a century later people went wild for hyacinths in a similar, though less extreme, way. Exotic looking hyacinths, especially double whites with a coloured ‘eye’, were on the shopping list of every anybody who was someone and all wannabees too.









