Don’t call Jimmy Tulip a gardener. This Haddonfield man is ‘an artist who works with flowers.’

Jim Cuifolo plants 50,000 tulips annually in and around Haddonfield, where he’s variously known as the Tulip Guy, Jimmy Tulip, and the Johnny Appleseed of the boldly hued flowers that signify spring.

“Planting tulips is a creative process,” said Cuifolo, who has owned and operated the Haddonfield Tulip Co. since 2012. “In the fall, you have to envision what you want in the spring, and after you plant the bulbs, you have to wait.

“Winter is cold and long. But you get a reward: A unique flower that only lasts a short time. I like that concept. Tulips are ephemeral.”

Haddonfield civic leader Joe Murphy hired Cuifolo to do tulips and other plantings around his Tanner Street law office and later at his Chestnut Street home. The plants have become a springtime go-to in the borough.

“Jimmy Tulip is not a gardener. He’s an artist who works with flowers,” Murphy said. “And tulips are his crowning glory.”

Kathy DeAngelo, a musician who discovered Cuifolo’s work while getting a violin repaired at a shop on Tanner Street, said it’s a delight to drive around Haddonfield and view the tulips.

“Jim’s like Johnny Appleseed,” she said. “He’s got this passion, and he shares it with everybody by bringing all this beauty out on a huge canvas.”

“I had a learning disability, so school was difficult for me. I was more comfortable doing things on my own,” said Cuifolo, who lives in a former farmhand’s cabin in Burlington County with his cat, Elvis Purrsley. “I had the luxury of our backyard garden with woods behind it, where I spent all my time and learned about nature. I took a few classes, but I’m pretty much self-taught. ”

Cuifolo graduated from Haddon Township High School in 1993 and earned a degree in business from Rowan University in December 1998, having already landed a management position at UPS. But corporate life never really suited him, and after more than a decade he’d had enough. He wanted to work for and by himself.

“I left the UPS job when my son, Benjamin, was born,” said Cuifolo, adding that it soon became apparent that Benjamin had special needs. He was diagnosed with autism and is now 15 and enrolled in a residential school.

“When I was with my son and things were difficult, I started planting tulips,” Cuifolo said. “I would order a few hundred, and then a few thousand, and it started to grow from there.”

“I decided to start my own business because I was very stressed out, to be honest,” he said. “Plus it gave me the flexibility to help care for my son.”

Cuifolo took classes at Longwood Gardens in Chester County and Chanticleer Garden in Delaware County and studied techniques by visiting gardens. He read as many books as he could, on tulips in particular.

“People started asking me to do work for them, and then someone else would ask,” he said. “So I would say my business grew organically.”

Although his firm also provides lawn care and landscaping services in Haddonfield and several adjacent communities, tulips are Ciufolo’s calling card.

“The endless colors and textures of tulips draw you in,” he said. “It never gets old. Every year there’s something new to do creatively.”

He maintains a dozen tulip-only gardens for private clients, most of whom like to replace the bulbs with new ones every year.

“Tulips are food for the eyes,” said Hanneke Hollander, who works in customer service at Color Blends, a Connecticut company that imports bulbs from her native Holland and sells them in the U.S. market. She knows and respects Cuifolo’s work.

“Tulips have inspired so many artists,” Hollander said. “They’re the first reds we see in the spring after the yellow daffodils. They’re the colors we need after the winter. And it’s such a short life they have to show us.”

A sole practitioner save for a few part-time helpers he hires during the busiest seasons, Ciufolo puts some of what he learned at his UPS job, as well as from his father, to use as a business owner.

“You have to be able to take your knowledge and work it into a business plan that makes money,” he said. “It’s one thing to know how to do something, but it’s a whole other level to be able to visit 10 lawns a day and make them all look great and make money doing it.”

His father, who ran the Toots Lee auto parts store that was an Oaklyn landmark for decades, taught him the importance of having relationships with people in the community, Ciufolo said. “It’s how I operate now.”

Brett Ainsworth, publisher of the Retrospect weekly newspaper in Collingswood, said Ciufolo lent him two generators after a storm shut down power in the borough for two days in July 2019. The generators enabled the Retrospect to publish that week, he said.

And even Elvis Purrsley has assisted the paper.

“We saw something Jim posted on Haddonfield Tulip’s Facebook page about Elvis catching and eating spotted lanternflies, and we used a photo of him on the front page with a story about them,” Ainsworth said.

“Elvis definitely has a taste for spotted lanternflies,” said Ciufolo.

The cat is no stranger to media coverage. In 2022, the Bar Harbor Story, an online publication in Maine, wrote about Elvis’ enjoyment of hiking and kayaking.

“Elvis is more like a dog than a cat,” Ciufolo said. “Actually, he’s better than a dog.”

Like many other plants, tulips are sprouting earlier as overall temperatures and frequency of heat spells increase, Ciufolo said.

Tulips generally need about three months of dormancy during cold weather, which also kills fungi to which they are vulnerable. Bright red tulips can shrivel up prematurely if they absorb too much hot sunshine, which can melt pollen inside the blossom.

“Climate change is a clear and present danger to the tulip world — not in some distant esoteric future but today,” he said.

Concern about the ecosystem also led Ciufolo to begin keeping bees about four years ago. He has four hives outside his home.

Early in the pandemic, Ciufolo was diagnosed with third-stage renal cell carcinoma. He’s been cancer-free for nearly two years and said working outdoors, as well as interactions with clients, were essential to his recovery.

“I still went to work almost every day,” he said. “For me, it was a lot better to get out instead of staying in the house. It got me out of my head space, and I think seeing me during the pandemic helped my clients as well.

“And if I can inspire people to live a bit more of the life they would be more satisfied with — then that’s great, too.”