"The Art of Floral Decoration and... " a Keukenhof Travel Page by hquittner

Keukenhof was originally the “kitchen garden” of a castle. In 1949 the present institution was established It is 28 ha in the midst of the bulb fields and hothouses of the enormous Dutch horticultural industry. It is actually a commercial showroom in the form of a tourist trap. The plantings of the flowers (and most of the trees and shrubs) are “assigned” as plots to the different commercial growers (called Royal purveyors) who design and plant their area each fall. Plant dealers and landscape architects come and make purchase decisions. We come to gape.

Tulips were first imported into Holland in 1572 from Turkey. Its name is a corruption of the Turkish for turban (which the flowers resemble). Dutch growers immediately exploited its potential for hybridization producing numerous varieties of bulbs. By the 1630’s, the Dutch were de facto independent and in the midst of a financial boom. Along with buying paintings the upper middle class were into gardens and flower raising. This led to the “Tulip Mania” a period of speculation (like in stocks) where the price of a rare bulb brought thousands of guilders!Today there are over 700 varieties of tulip and they may all be exhibited at Keukenhof.

We decided to take our baby-sitters to Keukenhof. They had never heard of it although they are big property owners with lots of trees and gardens. They were astounded and pronounced their experience to be better than the Rijksmuseum,