{"id":471,"date":"2016-05-10T14:11:35","date_gmt":"2016-05-10T14:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/whiteflower1.wpengine.com\/?p=471"},"modified":"2020-05-14T19:53:32","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T19:53:32","slug":"our-springtime-visit-to-holland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whiteflowerfarm.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/10\/our-springtime-visit-to-holland\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Springtime Visit to Holland"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Every April, our Director of Horticulture, Rob Storm, heads to Holland. His trip this spring occurred during a spell of unusually chilly weather (similar to ours), with rain, sleet and snow sometimes falling on the growing fields. The flowers took it all in stride, as you\u2019ll see in Rob\u2019s spectacular photos.<\/p>\n

The annual trip is timed to coincide with peak bloom in the Netherlands, and Rob\u2019s days are a decathlon of coffees (a tradition of Dutch hospitality), and visits to grower\u2019s fields, hybridizer\u2019s fields, trial gardens, and display gardens including the internationally renowned Keukenhof. He begins each day around 7 a.m. (or earlier to catch the best light) and doesn\u2019t stop until after dinner, with no concessions for jet lag.<\/p>\n

The whirlwind tour begins in northwest Holland, where chilly winds blow in off the North Sea, keeping that area cooler than the south. The landscape is dotted with windmills of the old-fashioned kind, and with an expanding number of today\u2019s propeller-shaped wind energy turbines.<\/p>\n

\"T.<\/a><\/p>\n

The first stop is a visit with White Flower Farm\u2019s longtime bulb vendor, Fluwel. Rob is usually met by one of Fluwel\u2019s founders and owners, the renowned Daffodil expert Carlos van der Veek. \u201cWe catch up on how each other\u2019s families are growing,\u201d Rob says, \u201cand talk bulbs.\u201d Each year, the owners of Fluwel (an acronym that stands for \u201cFlowers love u, we enjoy life\u201d), grow samples of everything they send out, a quality control measure designed to ensure that the bulbs they\u2019ve received from other growers are top quality and true to name.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_9690\"<\/a>
Our Dutch partner, Carlos van der Veek, surrounded his home with bulb plantings. The idea is to inspire visitors and also show what the flowers look like in a home landscape as well as in the adjacent growing fields.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This year\u2019s Fluwel visit included a stop at Carlos\u2019 home, a 150-year-old thatch-roof farmhouse that could play a starring role in a fairytale. Carlos has planted the gardens around it with all sorts of bulbs, partly as a way to inspire visitors and also to provide a source for images showing bulbs in home landscapes rather than in Fluwel\u2019s growing fields.<\/p>\n

From Fluwel, Rob and Carlos head out to visit various growers. All are selected by Carlos who knows these suppliers personally and trusts them to consistently deliver top quality, true-to-name bulbs. More coffee is served, more bulb talk ensues, and Rob walks the fields with his camera and his notebook.<\/p>\n

\"T<\/a>
Tulip ‘Pink Impression’<\/a> in the fields at Poldertuin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the Dutch language, \u201ctuin\u201d means \u201cgarden,\u201d and \u201cpolder\u201d defines a bit of land reclaimed from the sea. Stops on this trip include Poldertuin, a garden in the northern region of Anna Paulowna. This garden is used to showcase the bulbs produced by the growers of the region, like this stunning planting of Tulip \u2018Pink Impression\u2019.<\/p>\n

The day Rob was to travel south happened to fall on what the Dutch call \u201cKing\u2019s Day,\u201d a nationwide celebration that generally corresponds to the birthday of its royal head of state, in this case, the April 27th birthday of King Willem-Alexander. Rob and his traveling companions woke extra early to get started before traffic would clog the roadways. \u201cDon\u2019t try to get a sandwich anywhere,\u201d Rob jokes. About the only people working on King\u2019s Day in Holland are the bulb growers whose seasonal business demands it.<\/p>\n

\"KAVB<\/a>
At the KAVB Test Garden, it’s possible to see first-hand how a plant changes and evolves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the display gardens run by KAVB (the Royal General Bulb Grower\u2019s Association), \u201cyou get to compare the bloodlines,\u201d Rob says. If the original version of a Tulip is, say, \u2018Christmas Marvel,\u2019 the KAVB gardens plant the original followed sequentially by all of its sports: Tulips \u2018Christmas Carol,\u2019 \u2018Christmas Dream,\u2019 \u2018Christmas Cloud,\u2019 and so on. Visitors are not generally granted access to this official location, but when accompanied by the right people for the right reasons, no one objects. The gardens are an incredible resource where it\u2019s possible to see the variations between varieties. They\u2019re also a terrific source for generating ideas for bulb mixes and combinations. Each sport blossoms at relatively the same time and grows to the same height as its parent, so combining a selection of \u2018Christmas\u2019 varieties, for example, will result in a beautiful and successful combo.<\/p>\n

In Lisse and around the region, Rob next visits a series of test gardens where it\u2019s possible to do close comparisons of certain varieties. They are a great place to go \u201cif, for example, I want to look at Tulip \u2018Candy Prince\u2019 and Tulip \u2018Purple Prince\u2019 to see how they differ,\u201d Rob says. The small beds, planted in a pretty patchwork in close proximity, are planted for just that purpose.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_1160\"<\/a>
One of the displays at the “always spectacular” Keukenhof gardens.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Each trip ends with a visit to the legendary Keukenhof. Gardeners and garden designers spend all year planning and planting the dazzling display, which runs for eight weeks only each spring. Last year, Keukenhof attracted 1.2 million visitors during the eight-week season. Bulb growers supply all of the bulbs, and the Keukenhof designer and his or her team set to work creating a captivating, colorful show. For Rob, a visit is \u201calways spectacular,\u201d and he makes notes and takes photos to record successful bulb combinations and design ideas. Some of the bulb combos are trialed back in Connecticut, an important step in ensuring they\u2019ll succeed for customers. Bulbs that blossom simultaneously in Holland may not repeat the same magic in the United States, so trialing is the key. \u201cYou need to understand what the combination does here,\u201d Rob says.<\/p>\n

Because Rob\u2019s traveling companions include members of the Keukenhof board of directors, he\u2019s given special access to the gardens before they open to the public. In the early hours of the morning, when the light is just right, he\u2019s able to take photographs without throngs of tourists in each shot. We don\u2019t envy him the early wake-up call, but the images and the quiet moments in this amazing garden are the stuff of dreams.<\/p>\n

\"Muscari<\/a>
One of the design ideas on view at this spring’s Keukenhof display was the planting of Muscari in “waves.” Soil was piled in mounds, and white-flowering varieties were planted high with blue-flowering varieties below, creating the impression of cresting waves.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Seeing so many flowers in just a few days is dizzying, and the photographic record becomes an enormous help once Rob returns home. \u201cAfter five or six days, you have a hard time seeing it all straight, but reviewing the images and notes allows you to boil down what should be tested and trialed back home, and it becomes very clear what we\u2019d like to share with our customers<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DSC_0999\"<\/a>
Just after dawn at Keukenhof, there are no tourists, and the light is just right for photographs.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every April, our Director of Horticulture, Rob Storm, heads to Holland. His trip this spring occurred during a spell of unusually chilly weather (similar to ours), with rain, sleet and snow sometimes falling on the growing fields. The flowers took it all in stride, as you\u2019ll see in Rob\u2019s spectacular photos. The annual trip is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":477,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"\nOur Springtime Visit to Holland - White Flower Farm's blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.whiteflowerfarm.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/10\/our-springtime-visit-to-holland\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Our Springtime Visit to Holland - White Flower Farm's blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Every April, our Director of Horticulture, Rob Storm, heads to Holland. 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