Most of the time, the operations of financial speculators, the "institutions", hedge funds and stock brokers seem like dealings in a different world.

It is normal to regard such dealings as being the preserve of a sort of financial elite which provide little more than passing interest for the ordinary man in the street.

Just over a year ago, I was on a cycling tour in that beautiful and overlooked corner of England – Northumbria.

There is a timeless beauty in the landscape evoking a history of Viking raiders and the glories of the monastic age. In turn, Picts, Vikings and Scots raided this land placing this fertile but remote county on the border of the realm firmly on the front line.

The people of old built fortified farms and pele towers as a place of refuge in those uncertain times.

Over the centuries, the area entered a peaceful era and quietly prospered, but the locals retained a gritty resolve born out of hardship.

The Viking tourists no longer visited and England was at peace with Scotland. With the coming of the industrial age, the conditions of the working classes slowly improved and ordinary working people were able to combine to form unions, to benefit from the Co-operative movement and to prudently save a little bit for a rainy day.

All that came crashing down with the 1929 Crash and the Great Depression, which, perhaps, hit the North-East hardest. Ship-building and coal mining declined and as hardship bit deep the desperate locals tried to draw attention to their plight with the unemployed of Jarrow (90% male unemployment) marching to London in the heart-rending Jarrow Crusade of 1936.

They were largely ignored by a wider public with no comprehension of their plight, only the rise of Hitler eventually providing work and relief.

This is, of course, all in the past, but we have now entered a new age of uncertainty. Apart from the incessant cold wind which blows so freely across Northumbria, my abiding memory of that cycling tour is not of the glorious castle and gardens at Alnwick, the rolling landscape or even of kippers at Craster.

It is of worried people standing patiently in line outside the local branch of Northern Rock, desperate to withdraw their carefully accumulated savings. It was something I never expected to see in my lifetime – a run on a British bank.

If the bank concerned had been based further south, much nearer London, perhaps the powers that be might have reacted more promptly. Newcastle is such a long way from London, while Michigan is even further.

What have these problems in far away places got to do with us? Little has happened over the last year and the evaporation of confidence has led us to the present day credit crunch. Will we ever learn?

Probably not. We are so easily blinded by the lure of easy money. How can the good times ever end?

History, however, tells us they always do. Equally, the good times will return, hopefully soon. Even gardeners are not immune to this and they too have had their period of madness.

In 1544, the first bulbs of a strange plant arrived in Vienna, sent by the Austrian ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). They were followed by further shipments and they became a feature of plantings in the gardens of merchants in Vienna. Being a little bit behind the times, bulbs of these plants did not arrive in Britain until 1577.

They did not cause much of a stir. The flowers of these tulip bulbs were fairly plain. They did, however, have a broad if dull colour range, being available in shades of yellow, white, purple and red.
Unusual and flamboyant varieties came later and caught the imagination of the plant buying public. Demand grew and prices started to rise, climbing steeply between 1610 and 1620. It was, however, the unusual varieties that commanded the top prices.

Whereas today even rare and flamboyant varieties of tulip bulbs cost pennies, it was so different then. The prices continued to rise as demand out-stripped supply.

Just like our present day housing market, everyone tried to jump on the bandwagon. Property and possessions were sold to raise cash to buy tulip bulbs. Tulipmania took hold. Rare and fancy tulip types could cost the same as a coach, silverware and – even in some cases – the cost of farms. There simply were not enough tulip bulbs to go round, and so Tulip Notes were issued.

Buyers and sellers of Tulip Notes met in Bruges, in a sort of early stock exchange. This had now become a paper speculation and people from the low countries, but especially the Dutch, tried to cash in on the mania.

It was not so much a craving for the flowers of the tulip bulbs, as a desire to cash in on their scarcity and make money. Poor peasants with an eye for the market made fortunes. Investors queued up to buy Tulip Notes, which promised to supply a stated number of bulbs on a certain date.

These notes changed hands for ever-rising prices. It seemed too good to be true. In 1637, the Dutch Government at last stepped in to control this outrageous speculation, decreeing all Tulip Notes had to be honoured and the bulbs supplied. The markets crashed and fortunes were lost overnight.

These days, gardening has returned to the status of hobby, and the garden provides something of a sanctuary away from the harsh world of speculative boom and bust.

There are now more than a billion bulbs exported from Holland each year, many of them being planted during October in British gardens to provide colour in the spring. They come in dwarf or tall forms, in a wide range of colours and styles and can, perhaps like some banking sector shares, be bought for pennies as part of a pleasant relaxing activity.

There should be a place in every garden for these lovely plants.
However, if someone tries to sell you a Tulip Note...