Keukenhof Gardens

DO CLICK ON EACH PICTURE SO YOU CAN REALLY SEE THE GARDENS

These are the world’s largest flower gardens and they are absolutely amazing. They are for everyone – if you love spring flowers, if you love colour, if you are a designer, if you are passionate about the green things of life, if you are photographer, painter, fibre artist, dreamer – it is all here for you, and for such a short time.

Keukenhof is open in the spring each year for about 2 months and because the gardens are replanted to a new theme every year – if you are visiting again – it will be different.

We had been told we could cycle there as it is not far from Haarlem where we live, but being a bit stretched energy wise we took a bus tour from Amsterdam. It was well worth doing – and if you have only a short time here in the Netherlands, in spring, then do this tour. We will go back in 2010 and just maybe we will ride our bikes there.

Approximately 7,000,000 (seven million) flower bulbs are planted each year. Thank you to the mayor of Lisse who in 1949 worked together with prominent Dutch bulb growers and exporters to develop the gardens and we are certainly grateful for that. Their objective was to have an open-air flower exhibition where growers could showcase their latest hybrids, where the consumers could view and also buy. People come from across the world to visit the gardens and to buy the bulbs. Silly Auckland gave away their flower show to Christchurch. This is what might have been.

The gardens cover some 70 acres, and that is 100,000 bulbs per acre, as well as trees, lakes, streams, sculpture gardens, greenhouses, eateries, pavilions and more – you can spend a great deal of time here and you will never see it all.

We are manic about flowers, birds, trees, sculpture, vistas, art – you name it, it is possible we could just be crazy about it, and if all of that sounds like you as well then this is a place to visit.

The bus trip to the gardens passes through the huge, dramatic, bright, multicoloured flower fields. These looked like strips of brighly coloured ribbons – and the colour spalshes could blow your mind. You could be forgiven for thinking you were on some pschedelic bus trip.

It was a quiet trip home, my mind abuzz with the colour, shape, drama and joy of it all.

Tags: Auckland, bus tour, Ellerslie Flower Show, flowers, Keukenhof Gardens, spring, tulips