The news that UK flower growers are suffering from a lack of foreign pickers this year reminded me of Scotland’s contribution to the re-establishing of the Dutch bulb growing industry post WW2. Devastated by five years of war and a vicious fascist policy designed to starve the rebellious Dutch into submission, folk in Holland were literally forced to eat whatever they could get their hands on. And that included flower bulbs. Screen actress Audrey Hepburn often talked about this in interviews and recalled how desperate folk – including her teenage self, would try to make bread using both tulip and daffodil bulbs, often with disastrous results. The Dutch population literally ate the seed-stock and had to look abroad post-war to nurserymen in the UK to restart the ailing industry. Commercial bulb growing in Scotland probably goes back a couple of hundred years and there are records indicating that Angus was by the 1880’s the daffodil capital of Scotia. Some 100 hectares in and aro...