I’ve been to the Netherlands a few times, but the first time in 1976 (below) I was there without a camera. It shocks me to think about it now, but there was actually a time when I walked around just… looking at things. I suppose I used my mind to remember things instead of filming them. Sometimes I even forgot things I’d seen. I didn’t have a computer then, either; instead I used a Selectric typewriter at my job each day. On that trip from Vancouver to Amsterdam, someone else took my photo as I arrived on the inaugural flight of CP Air (now part of Air Canada) to the Netherlands on a route over the polar region. Why was I on the flight? Evidently, the company I worked for did so much business with the airline that we were invited to send one employee as a free guest. So here I am with my 70s hippie headscarf on my very first trip to Europe. I do remember that there were tulips in flower and I was enamored with the Rijksmuseum and the funky houseboats on the canal. I recall seeing the bulb fields on that Dutch sojourn (but who can be sure, if they’re just memories and not Kodak prints?) I flew to London a few days later and stayed near Earl’s Court with some backpackers from Australia.
All of this is my way of confirming that I did actually visit the city of Amsterdam itself once in the spring sunshine (which relates to #mysongscapes). On my second visit to the Netherlands with my husband in April 1999, we drove from the airport in Amsterdam to the town of Lisse by way of the spectacular bulb fields, below, in order to visit the nearby Keukenhof Garden. By then I’d been writing a weekly gardening column for a Toronto newspaper for six years and a camera was very much part of my baggage. It was the beginning of a road trip to surprise our daughter, then an exchange student in French Alsace, for her 17th birthday. On the way, we would visit Hummelo so I could talk to Piet Oudolf, who was then becoming popular internationally for his landscape designs. (I wrote about that visit in a 2-part blog on the Oudolf entry border at the Toronto Botanical Garden.)
In the countryside near Lisse hundreds of colourful bulb fields tempt travellers to leave their cars and snap photographs.
You often see workers walking down the rows picking the withered flowers so the energy goes into the bulbs they’ll sell that autumn. The rows on the left were of early-blooming tulips whose flowers have been picked. As with all spring bulbs, once the flowers are finished the foliage should be left to turn yellow; all that continuing photosynthesis improves the vigor of the bulb.
Given the long flowering season of tulips, from the earliest botanical or species tulips, to the late-flowering cottage tulips, the Dutch bulb fields are in flower for up to 2 months.
I arranged in advance to visit the Keukenhof early in the morning, before the tour buses arrived, so we had it to ourselves for an hour or so. Six hundred years ago, the Keukenhof Gardens were the domain of the Countess of Holland, Jacoba van Beiren. The Countess hosted hunting parties on the grounds and grew herbs and vegetables for her castle kitchen in the rich soil. (Keukenhof is Dutch for “kitchen garden”). In 1840, the Keukenhof was laid out as park similar to one in Amsterdam.
It included the pond that still exists today, presided over by a coterie of pure white swans, below. It wasn’t until 1949 that the mayor of Lisse, along with ten bulb-growers, decided to use the property as annual open-air showcase for the tulips, hyacinths, daffodils and other spring bulbs they grew. The first year, 236,000 visitors passed through the Keukenhof’s gates to see the bulb show.
Today, Countess van Beiren’s kitchen garden has become the world’s biggest flower garden, a 32-hectare (79-acre) park filled with 7 million spectacular bulbs. The growers now number one hundred. But those “hunting parties” are still there: in 2019, 1.5 million visited Keukenhof during its 8-week open period, arriving between mid-March and mid-May to wander along the 15 kilometers of paths hunting for that perfect tulip, narcissus or crocus for their garden back home. That’s the big Darwin Hybrid ‘Pink Impression’, below.
Each fall, thirty gardeners begin the gargantuan task of planting the bulbs that will bloom the following spring. They’re planted in layers to ensure a long season of sequential bloom, placing late-blooming tulips deepest, then the early-blooming tulips, and finally the crocuses near the surface of the soil.
The garden styles at the Keukenhof are as varied as the bulbs themselves. One grower will plant in natural drifts in the woods.
Another might plant in geometric rows that resemble a living Mondrian painting.
Another conjures up a broad, azure-blue river of grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum). Few home gardeners would have the resources – or the desire — to landscape in vast blocks of color this way, but that’s not the point. According to the Flowerbulb Information Center in Holland, the display is meant to inspire gardeners, showing them how to use color effectively and teaching how to combine certain bulbs with an eye to height and form.
There are many beautiful flowering Japanese Cherry trees on the grounds that enhance the beauty of the bulbs.
Throughout the Keukenhof, there are growers’ shops where visitors can order bulbs that have caught their eye, and through the magic of international commerce, by September or October, they’ll be digging those very same tulips into their own flower beds, whether they live in Paris or Peoria or Philadelphia.
You will enjoy healthy life and live longer. sildenafil india Men often experience these sexual problems due to unhealthy lifestyle, obesity, smoking, underlying medical condition, viagra no doctor amerikabulteni.com stress and anxiety. Integrated treatment for dual conditions Drinking alcohol impacts viagra usa pharmacy an individual’s judgment abilities. Also, detoxing can cause rashes; some all over, others limited to the upper part of your stomach. buy generic levitra 
There are even places to sit and relax (something my husband did while I rushed about looking at bulb combinations.)
I visited Keukenhof that spring on April 24-25 and the gardens were at their very peak of perfection. I chose that date because it coincided with the famous Bulb Parade, below, and I assumed that the growers would plan the parade for peak bloom time. For more information on the Keukenhof Gardens including specific opening dates, times and admission prices, visit their web site.
While at the Keukenhof, I made some abstract multiple-exposure photos: vortexes, swirls…
… and impressionist views of the colourful rows of tulips….
… and daffodils.
In the spring of 2000, I used one of those Keukenhof tulip abstracts as the cover for a marketing brochure for an upstart online company for which I’d been asked to provide content, below, in exchange for “future considerations”.
Later that year, just as we were starting to line up vendors for all our products, gardencrazy was purchased by a big book company, Chapters Online, a division of the bookstore Chapters. A big corporate expansion and lots of “seed money” followed. I was made garden magazine editor and we finally launched with my welcome editorial, below. Months later, we were purchased by the competing big-box bookstore, Indigo Books, and its owner closed us down. But I did manage to save my story pages onto my computer as relics of a long-ago career experience.
*******
So…. how does music fit into this Dutch-flavoured #mysongscapes blog? Well, that’s another interesting detour in my eclectic career moves. If you’ve followed my blog, you might know the story of the years from 2008-2010 when I worked on a theatrical adaptation of the music of the late California singer-songwriter John Stewart. It’s a bit complicated, but you’ll find that blog here under Daydream Believer – the John Stewart Songbook. While I was working on it, I visited New York City to do some garden photography and bought a single ticket to the Belasco Theatre’s showing of Passing Strange. The title came from Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’ and it was the semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age story of a young black boy from Los Angeles who visits Amsterdam and has his eyes opened to a very liberated way of looking at life. The author/composer was Stew (Mark Stewart) and his band The Negro Problem performed the music. I have tallied the number of Broadway musicals I’ve seen in my life and they number fifty-five from Kismet and Annie Get Your Gun and Carousel with my mom at Vancouver’s TUTS (Theatre Under the Stars) in Stanley Park when I was a pre-teen in Vancouver to Fun Home, Beautiful, Come from Away and Hamilton at this end of my life (I might have missed a few). But Passing Strange is my favourite; it was fresh and utterly original, but not terribly tourist-friendly like Phantom or Cats. After all, there was “hashish on the menu”! It won a Tony for Best Musical Screenplay and was beloved by critics and those audiences that did manage to see it. In fact, director Spike Lee decided to film it in its closing days. Have a listen to Amsterdam which most definitely does not have anything to do with tulips!
********
This is the 13th blog in #mysongscapes series of winter 2020 that combine music I love with my photography. If you enjoyed reading, have a look at the others beginning with
- Joni Mitchell’s ‘Night in the City’;
- Paul Simon’s ‘Kodachrome’ and my life in photography;
- Vietnam and Songs of Protest;
- Galway Bay and memories of my grandfather and Ireland;
- Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme;
- The John Denver lullaby I sang to my first grandchild, Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine.
- Gordon Lightfoot for a Snow Day
- Madame George by Van Morrison – my favourite song in the world
- Brown Eyed Girl(s) – Van Morrison’s classic and my black-eyed susans
- Raindrops – on flowers and in my gardens
- Miss Rumphius and the Lupines
- Bring me Little Water – on water in the garden
If you enjoyed this blog, please feel free to leave a comment below. I love to read them.