Keukenhof goes British

If you love tulips, a visit to the spring gardens of Holland’s Keukenhof should be in your diary for 2013. From March 21 to May 20, the 32 hectares will be showcasing the very best bulbs for the 63rd International Flower Festival. Every year Keukenhof chooses a different country as the central theme.

This year it’s the United Kingdom, and work is well in hand recreating the London skyline. It takes around two months for the thirty gardeners to plant around seven million flower bulbs, and the results are truly spectacular.

I've been to Keukenhof  a couple of times now - it's at Lisse just outside Amsterdam - and found one day is really not enough to  appreciate all that's there. 

As well as the outdoor displays, there are pavilions with orchids, anthuriums, bromeliads, and the world’s largest lily show. Plus lots of ideas for flower arranging and displays, alongside restaurants and shops selling bulbs and souvenirs. Inspirational!

Did you know the sultans of the Ottoman Empire wore a tulip on their turbans? The word tulip comes from the Persian word for turban, tulipan.

The Keukenhof Festival is not the only reason to visit Holland next year. Amsterdam is planning an exciting programme of attractions, including a  celebration of 400 years of the city's canals, the reopening of the Rijksmuseum, 40 years of the Van Gogh museum, the centenary of the Frans Hals museum and a major exhibition about Peter the Great.
More details
http://www.iamsterdam.com/en-GB/Experience/Amsterdam%202013
 www.keukenhof.nl

Tulip fever

Back from a very short visit to Amsterdam to see the tulips. When I went a few years ago, they were late because of a long winter - this time there was colour everywhere. Some 12,000 bulbs have been planted around the canal ring and in private gardens, which were open for the last weekend in April. These blooms were in the Begijnhof, a cluster of buildings around a 14th century courtyard, which once provided homes for women who belonged to a lay Catholic sisterhood.

To the west of Amsterdam are the bulbfields, a glorious patchwork of colour, with daffodils, hyacinths and tulips of every variety imaginable.

The big attraction there is Keukenhof, where, for eight weeks every spring, landscaped gardens are ablaze with huge drifts of colour. Some 800,000 visitors flock to see the 4.5 million bulbs, all planted by hand.

Tulipmania began back in the 17th century, when Dutch traders brought tulips back to Amsterdam from Turkey. They became a luxury item, with unusual bulbs selling for up to 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. When prices fell, some investors were reportedly ruined.

Today, there are more than 100 varieties, which come in colours and shapes that the early collectors would envy, such as Sorbet (left) and Greenstar (below)

The displays provide plenty of inspiration. Here the intense blue of Muscari Armeniacum is a perfect foil for the white of the Calgary tulip.

New at Keukenhof is a walled garden which gives the historic background to the tulip and other bulbs in the Netherlands.
Here, the Knot Garden recreates a style popular in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Keukenhof is open daily until May 16. Tour companies run full and half-day tours, or take a train from Amsterdam to Schiphol airport, and then a bus for Lisse.

And if you can't get there in time for the tulips, consider a visit during the Open Garden Days, (Friday 18 - Sunday 20 June) when some 25 - 30 private gardens hidden along the canals open to the public.

More details at http://www.amsterdamtourist.nl/