Fortunately my husband indulges my love of gardening and agreed to plan our 2008 trip to Europe specifically around the blooming tulips. So we spent a glorious day in mid April perusing the gardens of Keukenhof. It is a day we won't soon forget and as luck would have it, we got blue skies. For any of you that have visited Amsterdam in the Spring, you know that those kind of days are few and far between.
Keukenhof Garden History
In 1949, the mayor of Lisse along with some leading bulb exporters and flower growers created an open air flower exhibition on today's site of Keukenhof Park. Over the years, the size of the park, number and variety of bulbs, and the number of visitors has grown into the infamous garden that is loved by millions today.
Keukenhof literally means 'kitchen garden' and was so named because it was the herb garden outside the castle kitchen of Jacoba van Beieren. The herb garden along with a vast hunting area around that castle now comprise the modern Keukenhof Park grounds.
The Dutch ornamental bulb industry shows off its best bulbs during the annual park exhibit as well as in the indoor shows where they present their most beautiful cut flowers. Each year, 93 local growers and exporters supply Keukenhof with their 'cream of the crop' bulbs for planting within the garden. For a complete list of these suppliers, visit the official website.
Five of these suppliers have bulb sales points within the park where you can order Spring blooming flowers that will be mailed to you for planting in Autumn. They also sell the large Amaryllis bulbs, cut flowers, and summer bulbs that you can purchase and carry home with you. If you have a garden, what better way to increase its beauty than with tulips direct from the Netherlands!
Keukenhof to bring spring greetings to Germany in 2011
In 2011, Keukenhof will bring its first spring greetings to Germany. The international flower exhibition has chosen 'Germany: Land of Poets and Philosophers' as its central theme for next year. This is not just a tribute to our most important export market for bulbs and flowers, but also to our many tens of thousands of visitors from Germany. Statistically speaking, Germany is the largest individual country of origin of the approximately 800,000 visitors welcomed to Keukenhof each year. Around 20% of these come from the east.
We will be keeping to our tradition of referring to the theme throughout the park, sometimes subtly and sometimes overwhelmingly, for example in an enormous mosaic of flowers. Examples of this from previous years include representations of Rembrandt van Rijn, Carolus Linnaeus, a Chinese dragon, New York's Statue of Liberty and the St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, all created using tens of thousands of flowering bulbs.
The choice for Germany is only logical, having already featured Sweden, China, the United States and Russia as central themes. "Germany is pre-eminently the country of poets and philosophers. German history has not only been shaped by politics, but more particularly by the social sciences. Expressing this in flowers will be a wonderful challenge for us."
In 2011, Keukenhof will be open from 24 March to 20 May.
