Keukenhof - The largest flower garden in the world

Tulips are native to the mountains of Central Asia. They resemble a sultan's turban and that is where their name comes from.




John and I took a four hour weekend drive to Holland to see the tulips. We stayed in a hotel in Haarlem called The Golden Tulip! Saturday was spent wandering around the Garden. At night we took the short train ride into Amsterdam to the big city square called Leidspelein. This is an area of theaters, cinemas, cafes and strolling pedestrians. The next day we drove to Annee's AFS host,Trudy DeJong's, house in Haarlem for the second time but still didn't find her at home. We got back to Frankfurt in time for John to speak in church. We haven't taken many road trips like this, but it was so fun and successful that I think we will do it more often.

This is a picture of the kind of farms we drove past in Holland.



The flower show runs mid-March to mid-May each spring. It is created by a group of bulb growers as an exhibition for the bulb trade. I believe it is the largest flower show, as they claim, but I must disagree when they say that the April Flower Parade is the "largest, most famous Flower Parade in the world." Pasadena's 2008 Tournament of Roses Parade had 46 flower-covered floats, plus bands and equestrians compared to Keukenhof's 20 floats!






Here are two ideas I'd like to use. For a patio table, I think an array of potted flowers like the ones above is beautiful. Next year I'd love to have a hedge of yellow and blue like below. (Note to self: use Hyacinthus for the blue, these are Muscari.)




This vase displays each stem individually and comes from the 1600's when tulips were very expensive and only for the rich. A huge TULIP MANIA occurred and speculation drove the prices so high a prized bulb might cost as much as a house! In 1637 the market crashed and thousands of people were ruined. This bursting market bubble has been a warning to speculative markets ever since. I found a smaller version of this vase in the gift shop.



This flower arrangement looks like a wedding cake and would be cute at a shower. It has pedestal like a cake stand.



My favorite model...