No year in the Netherlands, expat or otherwise, would be complete without making that annual pilgrimage to the bulbfields – the bollenstreek, as it is called. Some things are just too special to miss and the yearly extravaganza that Mother Nature puts on in those bare old fields that have been overwintering under a thick covering of frost, ice and snow is one of them. The warm weather has arrived. It’s time for rejuvenation! It’s time for colour! And I love it!
However, let’s apply a bit of realism here before we drown in an excess of sentimentality…The Dutch, it seems, have a different take on flowers to many other nations. Here in Holland, amongst the most famous flower-growers of the world, nature works in straight lines. Rows and rows of colourful tulips are laid out for us to see, in orderly stripes of colour: the palest of pink hyacinths, scarlet tulips, strikingly yellow daffodil stripes, set off by a splash of that most vivid hyacinth blue. The Dutch think in straight lines and are turned on, not by sentimental dreams of a glorious garden landscape, but by productivity, production lines, profit and loss and precise schedules for the export of their major, multi-million euro, commercial exercise. To the watching expats and tourists, however, the landscape is breathtaking and it’s time for a little dreaming and romance.
However, another shock is in store for the uninitiated. Not only is the aesthetic appearance of these fields of flowers not uppermost in the minds of their Dutch growers, despite nature’s best efforts, but they are not growing the flowers for their own sake at all! The flowers are largely expendable – just a necessary means to the commercial profit-making end: that all-important multiplication and maturing of the flower bulbs. What is important to the growers lies in the dark earth, buried out of sight. Some use is made, it is true, of cut flowers which are sold in flower stalls and shops all over Holland and exported across the world, but the major issue here is the cultivation of bulbs. In the flower fields the flower heads can be ruthlessly and systematically cut off to encourage further growth beneath the ground. The flower growers are patient and pragmatic and can wait whilst this process takes its course. In the meantime, the flowers lie in huge heaps by the side of the fields and by the roadside. Huge processions of flower floats display some of them for watching tourist eyes but the majority die unloved and unwanted. Flower production is not for the faint-hearted!
The final irony is to be found in that wonderful name: ‘Keukenhof’, known so well and pronounced so badly by countless myriads of annual tourists. They flock to the area by plane, ferry and coach and arrive on buses and in cars and campers to trample the fields and stand amazed in one of the most famous flower parks in the world. ‘Keukenhof’: a byword for natural beauty and breathtaking colour! These flowers are grown for their own spectacular beauty, but also as a showcase for the bulb growers to encourage visitors to order bulbs to stock our gardens next year and in years to come. Many of us are unaware of the prosaic roots of that romantic sounding name: the kitchen garden! Just a modest little vegetable garden…
However, let’s apply a bit of realism here before we drown in an excess of sentimentality…The Dutch, it seems, have a different take on flowers to many other nations. Here in Holland, amongst the most famous flower-growers of the world, nature works in straight lines. Rows and rows of colourful tulips are laid out for us to see, in orderly stripes of colour: the palest of pink hyacinths, scarlet tulips, strikingly yellow daffodil stripes, set off by a splash of that most vivid hyacinth blue. The Dutch think in straight lines and are turned on, not by sentimental dreams of a glorious garden landscape, but by productivity, production lines, profit and loss and precise schedules for the export of their major, multi-million euro, commercial exercise. To the watching expats and tourists, however, the landscape is breathtaking and it’s time for a little dreaming and romance.
However, another shock is in store for the uninitiated. Not only is the aesthetic appearance of these fields of flowers not uppermost in the minds of their Dutch growers, despite nature’s best efforts, but they are not growing the flowers for their own sake at all! The flowers are largely expendable – just a necessary means to the commercial profit-making end: that all-important multiplication and maturing of the flower bulbs. What is important to the growers lies in the dark earth, buried out of sight. Some use is made, it is true, of cut flowers which are sold in flower stalls and shops all over Holland and exported across the world, but the major issue here is the cultivation of bulbs. In the flower fields the flower heads can be ruthlessly and systematically cut off to encourage further growth beneath the ground. The flower growers are patient and pragmatic and can wait whilst this process takes its course. In the meantime, the flowers lie in huge heaps by the side of the fields and by the roadside. Huge processions of flower floats display some of them for watching tourist eyes but the majority die unloved and unwanted. Flower production is not for the faint-hearted!
The final irony is to be found in that wonderful name: ‘Keukenhof’, known so well and pronounced so badly by countless myriads of annual tourists. They flock to the area by plane, ferry and coach and arrive on buses and in cars and campers to trample the fields and stand amazed in one of the most famous flower parks in the world. ‘Keukenhof’: a byword for natural beauty and breathtaking colour! These flowers are grown for their own spectacular beauty, but also as a showcase for the bulb growers to encourage visitors to order bulbs to stock our gardens next year and in years to come. Many of us are unaware of the prosaic roots of that romantic sounding name: the kitchen garden! Just a modest little vegetable garden…
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