Shot! The 2026 Arundel Castle Tulip Festival

This year the blooms arrived early, but apart from a few individual standouts, the wow-factor was surprisingly elusive

I’ve been coming to the Arundel Castle Tulip Festival since 2019. This year felt different – not just because I was unable to visit in 2025, but because it marks the end of an era.

After seventeen years, award-winning head gardener Martin Duncan is retiring. He is the man who created the festival and who, under his tenure, transformed the West Sussex castle’s 38-acre gardens into something worthy of the highest horticultural awards. As well as the greenest of fingers, his yet-to-be-named successor will have big wellies to fill.

The tulip festival itself began in 2016 – making this year its 10th anniversary. Notably, it was one of, if not the very first, tulip festivals in the UK. Now they’re springing up all over the country, though perhaps none will ever be quite as creatively planted as Arundel – helped in no small part by the backdrop of the whimsical timber structures created by Isabel and Julian Catto, the husband and wife team who made their name shaping King Charles’ garden at Highgrove.

Tulips themselves have a long relationship with England – they first arrived here in the 1630s, almost 400 years ago. The walled Earl’s Garden, which plays host to the heart of the festival, has a more recent history: opened in 2008, it was previously the site of the staff car park and the castle’s kitchen garden.

This year the tulips came early. Very early. For the first time, the festival began on the very same day the castle itself reopened after shutting for winter in November.

The garden team had used that time to plant between 100,000 and 130,000 bulbs, not just within the Earl’s Garden but throughout the castle grounds and along its impressive ramparts.

One of the most beautiful and varied flowers to look at, tulips are notoriously unpredictable to grow. Precisely when they bloom depends entirely on the weather and the variety planted, and when they do reveal themselves, they’re only at their perfect best for a week or so.

Helped by years of experience, the garden team’s challenge is always to sustain displays for as long as possible. I was there first thing on opening day, but I suspect it will look more impressive in a week’s time. That said, I can only judge what I saw.

Any first-time visitor would be impressed. The gardens and their structures are gorgeous. But for seasoned visitors, comparison with previous years is unavoidable. And to be truthful, this wasn’t the most eye-catching display I’ve seen.

Labelling anything a ‘festival’ dials up the anticipation for something bigger and more immersive than you would ordinarily see. If truth be told, this year there was a noticeable absence of the swathes of massed colour that had made earlier editions so memorable, and so photogenic.

Most notable was the complete absence of the stunning tulip labyrinth – the visual centrepiece of the festival for so many years. In its place, an empty lawn, albeit one that looked ready for a game of bowls. Martin explained the reasoning: leaving it fallow to encourage stronger future growth. Even so, the space cried out for something – a central display, an art piece, anything would have been welcome.

For me, one of the most memorable sights wasn’t actually in the Earl’s Garden itself, but elsewhere in the castle grounds. I think it’s new, at least I’ve not seen it before.

I’m talking about an impressive run of box hedge that has been fashioned into what is known as cloud or Niwaki hedging. So different from formal topiary, this looked stunning in the morning light.

Less pleasing on the eye were the newly commissioned urns and benches in green oak that have replaced originals in the Earl’s Garden that cracked over the years. The problem is, instead of the grey stone-like finish that a year of weathering creates, they’re really quite jarring to look at.

Speaking of old wood, one of the most magical areas remains the stumpery.

Now that it has had time to mature, it was looking wonderful – the salvaged stumps from yew and chestnut trees brought down by winds on the estate are something to behold.

As were the Acuminata tulips: a rare, exotic-looking heirloom variety first classified in 1827, with six long pointed flame-red petals with a yellow base. On opening day, though, there were simply not enough in bloom to create the visual impact they deserve – they need to appear in clumps, not as individual specimens.

And that, really, was the story of this year’s festival – a lack of colour and visual impact. Very much more of the same; subtle variations on a tried and tested theme and nothing resembling an exciting new talking point.

Martin Duncan’s successor will have an immediate priority: bring back the labyrinth, with the most impressive display of red tulips imaginable. Beyond that, there’s a strong case for finding new ways to add visual impact – perhaps even introducing an annual theme to better differentiate one year from the next and test the garden team’s artistic ingenuity.

The castle — which remember is privately owned, it’s the home of the Duke of Norfolk — also needs to do a much better job of promoting the festival. You can come to Arundel, even visit the castle, and not even realise the tulip festival is happening. The Earl’s Garden itself is located as far from the main entrance as it’s possible to be.

When it comes to the Tulip Festival, they are making small strides — tip-toeing if you like. Individual specie name tags are only a very recent addition and this year was the first time a map of the garden had appeared on a permanent sign.

Looking ahead, if it were me, I’d take inspiration from the source. Tulip festivals across Holland regularly feature stunning showpiece artworks covered with tulips. The commercial opportunities – food and wine events in the garden, flower-arranging workshops, illuminated evening displays, themed souvenirs – are considerable, and few if any have been tested.

Of course the right balance between nature and spectacle matters. But I think most visitors simply want to be blown away by massed colour and an abundance of Instagram worthy moments.

That’s still possible here. Martin Duncan has created something genuinely special, and the festival he leaves behind has potential to grow into something even more remarkable, even more unique and even more of an attraction.

Behind the shot: All these images were taken handheld mainly with the iPhone 16 Pro and a few with the Olympus OM-D E-M1. As always, it was all about looking for interesting compositions and patiently waiting until there were no people in the frame. Photographed at Arundel Castle on 1 April 2026.

About the author: Based in Sussex-by-the-Sea, on England’s south coast, Gary is a creative writer and image-maker. He specialises in creating out of the ordinary portraits of musicians and people with interesting faces, as well as photographing some of the world’s finest flowers and gardens, not forgetting an array of automotive exotica.

On the writing side, he has authored deep dives into some noteworthy songs beginning with Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’ ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials, ‘Real Wild Child’ by Ivan and ‘All The Young Dudes’ by Mott the Hoople.

He has also written a biography of Robert Palmer and the stories behind Whitesnake’s blatant Led Zep rip-off, ‘Still Of The Night’, Harry Styles’ anthem to positivity, ‘Treat People With Kindness’ and the little known Queen track ‘Cool Cat.’

Gary has also penned the fascinating story behind George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four,’ as well as ‘Believe It Or Not’ a look into the rise of fake news.

All these can be found here on Medium, along with his reviews of gigs and events and chats with musicians including the likes of Royal Blood, Joe Satriani and Wolf Alice.