Järva County daffodil fields in full bloom with the warm weather
With the recent arrival of warmer temperatures, over 10,000 daffodils are expected to flower over the next few days at a park in Järva County.
The manor building at Udeva, around 30 kilometers east of Paide, burned down at the end of 1989, and there are no plans for its reconstruction, though part of the structure will be repurposed as a village picnic area, and the 5-hectare manor park remains.
A community clean-up day took place Friday, ahead of the park's daffodil day, open to the public today, Saturday.
The daffodil bulb planting project there is a community initiative by the non-profit organization Uddewa (using an older Estonian spelling convention - ed.) which started 10 years ago.
"The daffodils themselves gave us a clear hint that they wanted to grow here in the park. When we started restoring the manor park 10 years ago, it was overgrown with brush taller than a person, but the daffodils bloomed every spring. We saw that this mattered to people, and most of these daffodils have been donated either from home gardens or by Riketsi aiand, who have given us daffodil bulbs from Women's Day flowers," said Uddewa's initiator Kaarel Kutti.
No one has been able to count exactly how many daffodil bulbs have been planted in the park, but a realistic estimate would put the figure at over 10,000, divided between nearly a dozen varieties.
"There are probably around 10 varieties. For many of them, we simply refer to the place they came from — saying this one is from Imavere and that one from Melliste," Kutti added.
Only particularly hardy daffodil varieties that can grow amid grass get sown.
The Uddewa association says it has no designs on transforming the manor park into botanical gardens, but the intention is to triple the size of the daffodil fields within the next couple of years.
As for the weekend, Kutti said that despite the weather having played tricks on us in recent times, peak blooming could take place right now – Kutti was talking based on the weather forecast earlier this week for Friday, May Day, and Saturday, which, as it turns out, indeed has brought warm and sunny conditions after the recent colder snap.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Marko Tooming
Source: 'Aktuaalne kaamera,' reporter Olev Kenk.
