About Keukenhof Gardens & It's History
Keukenhof dates back to the 15th century when Countess Jacqueline van Beieren (known as Jacqueline of Bavaria who lived from 1401- 1436) used the land for growing herbs, fruits, and vegetables for the nearby Teylingen Castle's kitchen, so it was referred to as the 'Keukenduin', which is where the name ‘Keukenhof’ comes from as it translates to "Kitchen Garden".
In the late 1630’s the estate appears to have been bought by one of the governors of the East India Company who then commissioned Keukenhof Castle (Kasteel Keukenhof) to be built in 1641. Then, gradually over the years the Keukenhof castle estate grew to cover over 200 hectares or just under 500 acres.
In the mid 1800’s, landscape architects Jan David Zocher and his son, Louis Paul Zocher, were recruited by the then owners to transform and redesign the castle’s gardens. They went on to design and create an amazing English landscape style garden which still forms the basis of Keukenhof to this day!
The Keukenhof Gardens Background Continued...
In 1949 a group of businessmen that were some of the best flower growers and exporters in Holland decided to take advantage of the Keukenhof castle grounds as they wanted to use it to show off the amazing beauty of their flowers and product range for all to admire, and to use some of estate grounds as a 'living catalogue' to grow and show off the products they offered and sold, and that is how and when Keukenhof flower festival started as a spring park!
The group decided to open their first flower show to the public and not just their business contacts, as they wanted all to be able to enjoy the beauty of the landscaped park with the flower exhibition. The first Keukenhof show opened in 1950 and was a major success from day 1 and the attracted over 200,000 visitors in its first year!
The annual Keukenhof Gardens show has continued to grow ever since and now warmly welcomes over 1,000,000 visitors each year, who come from all over the world to enjoy the garden and tours of this horticultural masterpiece! The Keukenhof estate is now owned by Stitching Graaf Carel van Lynden and is managed by the Graaf Carel van Lynden Foundation.
Keukenhof Gardens Flower Festival
Keukenhof Gardens, or the 'Garden of Europe' to use its nickname, is a world-renowned annual flower festival or Spring festival held in Lisse, in the Netherlands.
Each year the Keukenhof gardeners work with 100 flower companies to create the amazing displays of beauty using tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and other flowers. In total the gardeners plant around 7,000,000 bulbs to create what they call a ‘living catalogue’ which shows off the product range of the companies involved.
The flowers are presented in a variety of ways including fields, flower arrangements, garden sculptures and floral pavilions. The process includes 500 flower growers presenting their incredible collection of flowers spanning 20 flower shows spread out across 79-acres of Keukenhof’s beautiful estate and creating the stunning flower gardens.
The gardeners start to plant the bulbs around October so they are ready for the following March when Keukenhof opens. The bulbs are planted not only by colour but also by shape, size and height, in order to create the amazing displays of beauty that the visitors get to enjoy. The bulbs are planted at different stages to try and ensure there is a constant bloom during the 8-weeks that Keukenhof is open for.
Keukenhof now regularly attracts more than one million visitors from around the world each year to enjoy its incredible beauty, bringing a huge number of tourists to the Netherlands for the annual festival.
Keukenhof is located in Lisse, which is around 35-minutes away from Amsterdam. Lisse is in an area known as the 'Bollenstreek' which roughly translates to 'Bulb-Strip' as the whole area is famous for growing flowers and is the flower bulb area.
Although Keukenhof is the main attraction, there are plenty of other villages surrounding Keukenhof where you will also see flowers being grown. The whole Bollenstreek area comes to life in the spring time with flower field upon flower field of amazing Dutch flowers creating vast blankets of colour as they come into bloom. The floral displays attract tourists from all over the world during the short period of time to enjoy this Dutch horticultural marvel. The surrounding villages also take part in the annual flower parade as well, which is an incredible sight which shows of the seasonal blooms from the area.
