dunes & bulbs. A road trip to Holland

Hello Holland!

Tulips, beach & Amsterdam – the dune and bulb region. We arrived in a country with more bikes than cars & millions of tulips.

It’s April. It’s Easter. Part of The Netherlands is transformed into a vast sea of flowers: crocus, daffodils, hyacinths, and tulips. All of them show their gorgeous colors. One more beautiful than the other. A floral paradise not only for flower enthusiasts (even hubby liked it).

Its long spring season with cool nights makes The Netherlands the perfect country for tulip growing. The soil in the polders is continuously drained, creating perfect growing conditions for tulip bulbs, which love well drained but moist soil.

From mid March to the end of May, the tulips transform big parts of The Netherlands into a colorful patchwork quilt.

And now the less romantic part:

The tulips in the fields are not grown for the vase, but are used to propagate tulip bulbs. That is why these beauties are simply mown before the end of flowering in May. This gives more power to the bulb, which is then pulled out of the ground in summer. That’s why you get the best tulip bulbs in late summer, which you can plant in the ground in autumn.

Tulip growing is an important industry in the Netherlands. Originally from Central Asia, the tulip has been cultivated in Holland for many generations in a wide variety of colors and the Dutch are very proud of it.