The Dutch have achieved particular success in breeding tulips and selecting new varieties. Hundreds of yesterday's fishermen and artisans have retrained as flower growers. Many farmers turned their fields and vegetable gardens into vast plantations to grow the much-in-demand plant.
Bulb prices have been rising steadily for several years. And Holland, with its advanced economy and free enterprise spirit, became the main supplier of tulips for all of Europe.
The culmination of the tulip fever. The authorities sent soldiers to destroy flower plantations to stop falling prices. In the foreground is a Dutchman who is ready to defend his pot of an exotic tulip with arms in hand.
At the same time, spontaneous exchanges emerged in Amsterdam and a number of other cities, where such popular goods were actively traded. Moreover, not only professional brokers, but also many random people actively participated in the trading. Another feature of such exchanges was speculation in futures. That is, contracts were concluded for the purchase and sale of bulbs that still had to be grown. Or those varieties that have not even been bred yet.
An onion of a rare variety was considered the best dowry
The year 1634 is traditionally considered the start of tulip mania. The rapid rise in prices also spurred the influx of capital from other countries. In a week, the price of a “new product” on the market could double. There are known cases when a mill or a ship was traded for a pot of exotically colored tulips. Girls were considered desirable brides, for whom a variegated onion was given as a dowry.
By the end of 1636, the excitement reached its climax. The cost of not only rare, but also the most common tulips has risen sharply. Many were sincerely confident that the price of these flowers would rise forever. A short-term drop in demand in November soon turned into an even more rapid rise in prices. Many speculators have lost their sense of reality. They became so self-confident that they mortgaged all their property without thinking about the potential risks.
By February 1637 prices had reached their peak. But the market turned out to be overheated, and the stock exchange bubble naturally burst. The cost of bulbs has dropped significantly. Hundreds of owners of receipts (among whom were doctors, bakers, and even chimney sweeps) for flowers that had not yet grown found themselves bankrupt. The authorities, wanting to save the situation, took radical measures. To stop the fall in prices, soldiers were sent to flower plantations to destroy the seedlings. But it was all in vain. The tulip exchanges collapsed.
In 1636, 5,200 guilders were paid for one onion
Later in literature, the story of the tulip madness and the complete ruin of stock exchange players was vividly and repeatedly described. There are many myths and fables. But in fact, the Dutch economy, against the backdrop of the collapse of the tulip exchanges, not only avoided depression, but also continued to grow. And the Netherlands still remains the world leader in flower production.
The events of tulip mania became the backdrop for the love drama “Tulip Fever” (USA - UK, 2017)
The main lesson of tulip mania was that any game on the stock exchange should be played thoughtfully and professionally. And when everyone starts to engage in an asset at once, this is a sign of an upcoming “bubble”. I recall the words of the famous financier John P. Morgan, who managed to save his assets before the stock market crash of 1929: “When shoe shiners enter the market, the professionals need to leave.” Experienced brokers always sense the main trends. And they manage to withdraw both their own and their clients’ funds before the “bubble” bursts.
Mountains of empty containers are what catches your eye when you arrive in Rotterdam, one of the world's largest ports. Although a year ago everything was different - there was, as they say, no end of work here. The loud bells of the global crisis rang out in the Netherlands earlier than in other EU countries, and the government had to be the first to make decisions that its neighbors were yet to make. As a result of timely measures taken, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Wouter Bos became almost a national hero. The natural economy of the Dutch also helped.
From the glass cafe “Euromast” (Euromast is a reinforced concrete tower, like Ostankino), the port of Rotterdam is clearly visible. Berths, docks, port pools, warehouses, industrial zones stretch along the channels of the Rhine and Meuse delta for about forty kilometers to the sea. Rotterdam is the main sea gate of the Old Continent. Without it, it is difficult to imagine the work of enterprises in the Ruhr - the industrial heart of Germany. A considerable part of the industry of the Netherlands itself is concentrated in it (70 thousand people are employed in the port and its industrial zones). Road trains with Austrian, Polish, and Estonian license plates are queuing for cargo.
Every year you can see something new from the Euromast. Construction of the Maasflakte 2 site began last fall. Several hectares will be taken away from the sea, and Rotterdam will be able to accommodate the world's largest container ships. But this will not happen soon. As Hans Smits, President and CEO of the Rotterdam Port company, admitted at a meeting with journalists, due to the global financial and economic crisis, the results of the second half of last year were unimportant, and many projects will have to be postponed.
However, leaving Rotterdam, you realize that today the Netherlands looks pretty good against the background of neighboring countries. There are no, for example, mass protests by those who have lost their jobs or who are really at risk. According to Eurostat, the unemployment rate here is the lowest in the European Union - 4.1%. This is especially impressive when compared with, say, Spain (16.1%). Unemployment among young people - the scourge of the Old Continent - is also approximately 5%, against 20 in France and 17 on average in the EU.
The fact is that the government of the Netherlands managed to get its bearings in time. As soon as the largest American investment bank, Lemon Brothers, collapsed in September last year, thereby causing a chain reaction on global financial markets, the Dutch cabinet announced government guarantees for loans of 200 billion euros. According to Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, this had to be done to maintain confidence in the financial system and stimulate money circulation.
The Netherlands had to save the systemically important bank Fortis, which in one day on September 25 last year lost 20% of its listing on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. The government nationalized the bank's domestic assets, and the same thing happened with its Belgian branch. After this, the popularity of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of the Netherlands, socialist Wouter Bos, increased sharply. True, meticulous economists advise reading statistics critically.
One of the leading researchers at the Department of Microeconomics at the Free University of Brussels, Nicolas Gothel, said that a feature of the Dutch liberal model is the existence of a huge mass of different recruitment agencies. They allow energetic people to work in several places at once for up to 16 hours a day. By losing part of their wages, such a “multi-station worker” is not included in the statistics of the unemployed, although he becomes poorer.
According to estimates by Willem Velthuizen, professor of economics at the University of Groning, every Dutch adult has lost 26 thousand euros since the beginning of the crisis. Moreover, representatives of the older generation, retiring during this difficult time, suffered even greater damage. The calculations are based on comparing the value of real estate, pension fund assets and shares as of January 1 of last year to March 1 of this year: the difference is 325 billion euros.
Compared to the original value of more than two trillion, this is not so much. The average Briton, for example, if calculated using the same methodology, lost 50 thousand euros. In the Netherlands, smaller losses are explained by national characteristics. The Dutch, even in Europe, are known as thrifty. Their consumption pattern rejects excess and luxury. “Unlike developing countries and ‘emerging economies’, in the Netherlands the reaction to changes in purchasing power is weak, people are becoming a little more careful in purchases above 300 euros, which is only 3% of usual expenses,” notes Professor Velthuizen. By the way, in the large Rotterdam store “Quattro”, which sells kitchens and bathrooms, the retail space has been reduced by approximately half.
Previos news >Next newsFinancial pyramids, from which many Russians suffered at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, turn out to be far from a new phenomenon. One of the first such pyramids arose back in the 16th century and led to the ruin of an entire country - Holland.
In 1593, Carolus Clusius, director of the herbal garden of Emperor Maximilian II, planted several tulip bulbs in the soil of the botanical garden of Leiden University. The next year, flowers appeared that determined the entire future fate of Holland.
Like most other ornamental plants, the tulip came to Europe from the Middle East. But the tulip had one interesting feature. Beautiful flowers of one color or another grew from its bulbs, and after a few years it suddenly changed: stripes appeared on the petals, each time in different shades. It is now known that this is the result of a viral disease of tulips. But then it looked like a miracle. If a diamond dealer had to buy a new diamond for a lot of money and cut it in a new way, then the owner of a single tulip bulb could become the owner of a new, unique variety, which was already worth several orders of magnitude more on the tulip market.
In 1612, the Florilegium catalog with drawings of 100 varieties of tulips was published in Amsterdam. For example, the bulb of the tulip shown in the picture cost, depending on the size, from 3,000 to 4,200 florins.
Many European royal courts became interested in the new symbol of prosperity. Tulips have jumped in price. In 1623, a bulb of the rare variety Semper Augustus, which was in great demand, cost a thousand florins, and at the height of the tulip boom in 1634-1636 they paid up to 4,600 florins. For comparison: a pig cost 30 florins, and a cow cost 100 florins.
The second reason for the tulip boom was the cholera epidemic of 1633-1635. Due to the high mortality rate in the Netherlands, there was a shortage of workers, so wages increased. Ordinary Dutch people had extra money, and, looking at the tulip madness of the rich, they began to invest in their own tulip business.
Clusius literally infected the Dutch with his passion for tulips. Insanity began in the country, complete madness, later called “Tulipomania” by historians. For more than 20 years, the Dutch have managed to grow dozens of varieties of tulips.
In 1625, a rare tulip bulb could already cost 2,000 gold florins. Their trading was organized on the stock exchanges of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Haarlem and Leiden. The volume of the tulip exchange reached an astronomical amount of 40 million florins.
By 1635, the price had risen to 5,500 gold per bulb, and by early 1637, tulip prices had increased 25-fold. One onion was given as a bride's dowry, three were worth as much as a good house, and just one Tulip brasserie onion was given for a thriving brewery. Bulb sellers earned huge amounts of money. All conversations and transactions revolved around a single item - bulbs.
For example, a red tulip bulb with white veins cost 10,000 florins, and Rembrandt was paid 1,800 for his painting “The Night Watch,” which made him very happy.
The documented record was a deal of 100,000 florins for 40 tulip bulbs. To attract poor people, sellers began to take small advances in cash, and the buyer’s property was used as collateral for the rest of the amount. For example, the cost of a Viceroy tulip bulb was "2 loads (2.25 cubic meters) of wheat, 4 loads of rye, 4 fat cows, 8 fat pigs, 12 fat sheep, 2 skins of wine, 4 barrels of beer, 2 barrels of butter, 1000 pounds of cheese, a bed, a wardrobe with clothes and a silver cup" - a total of 2,500 florins. The artist Jan van Goyen paid the Hague burgomaster an advance of 1,900 florins for ten bulbs, offered a painting by Solomon van Ruisdael as collateral for the rest of the amount, and also undertook to paint his own.
Tulip fever gave rise to legends. One of them is about how a port tramp, seeing a ship entering the harbor, rushed to the office of its owner. The merchant, delighted by the news of the return of the long-awaited ship, selected the fattest herring from the barrel and rewarded the ragamuffin with it. And he, seeing an onion on the counter that looked like a peeled onion, decided that herring was good, but herring with onions was even better, put the onion in his pocket and departed in an unknown direction. A few minutes later, the merchant grabbed a tulip bulb Semper Augustus (“Eternal August”), for which he paid 3,000 florins. When the tramp was found, he was already finishing his herring and onions. The poor guy went to prison for theft of private property on an especially large scale.
Another apocryphal story is about how Haarlem tulip traders heard about a Hague shoemaker who managed to breed a black tulip. A delegation from Haarlem visited the shoemaker and bought all the black tulip bulbs from him for 1,500 florins. After which, right in front of the amateur tulip grower, the people of Haarlem rushed to furiously trample the bulbs and only calmed down after turning them into mush. They were afraid that an unprecedented black tulip would undermine their well-established business. But the shoemaker could not bear the barbarity, he fell ill and died.
Many Dutch people quit their jobs and constantly played on the tulip market. Homes and businesses were mortgaged to buy bulbs and resell them at a higher price. Sales and resales were made many times, while the bulbs were not even removed from the ground. Fortunes doubled in moments, the poor became rich, the rich became super-rich. The first financial pyramid began to be built, which even Mavrodi would envy. The tulip mafia has appeared, stealing the bulbs.
And on Tuesday, February 3, 1637, it ended in Holland. Moreover, unexpectedly and for hitherto unknown reasons. The auction began with the sale of inexpensive White Crown bulbs at a price of 1,250 florins per lot. Just yesterday there were many people who wanted to buy this lot for a much higher price, but today there were no buyers at all.
The sellers realized that all the bulbs needed to be sold immediately, but there was no one to do it. The terrible news spread throughout the city, and after some time throughout the country. Prices not only dropped - the tulip exchange immediately ceased to exist. Prices for bulbs fell an average of a hundred times. Tens of thousands of people went broke and became destitute in a matter of hours. A wave of suicides swept across the country.
Many farms went under the hammer. Many poor people became even poorer. And Holland suffered for a long time from the consequences of speculative fever. Businessmen from London and Paris, where she managed to transfer, also suffered. Tulips from “securities” again turned into just flowers, an object of delight for the eyes of passers-by and guests.
The scientific publication Smithsonian published material stating that the “tulip fever,” which is considered to be the first stock market bubble, was invented by Dutch Calvinists. People were chasing profit, but not in such large numbers as is described in textbooks and works of fiction. And this race certainly did not cause the collapse of the economy and industry. We have prepared a Russian-language adaptation of this article.
General madness
When the first tulips were grown in the Middle East, the whole world went crazy. Some varieties were worth more than gold. There is a legend that a sailor was accused of a criminal offense and sent to prison simply because he confused a rare tulip tuber with an ordinary onion and ate it for lunch. One bulb of the rare variety Semper Augustus, with flowers of red and white petals, cost as much as a mansion in a fashionable area of Amsterdam, with a personal trainer and a garden to boot. As the price of a tulip on the market increased, a wave of speculation began - traders raised prices for bulbs to the skies. And then, as usually happens with stock market bubbles, the tulip market “burst,” leaving hundreds of sellers without income.Dynamics of the index of futures (green) and option (red) prices for onions in 1635-1637 according to Thompson. Image: Wikimedia Commons
For several decades, economists have used the story of “tulip mania” as an example of the dangers and instability of the free market. Writers and historians have written hundreds of books about the absurdity of events. A film was even made on this topic, it is called “Tulip Fever”, its plot is based on the book by Deborah Moggch.
There is just one small caveat: this story is not true.
To understand the truth, you need to understand history
What really happened and how did it happen that the history of tulip speculation in Holland was so distorted? Anne Goldgar, professor of early modern history at King's College London, discovered the truth while researching archives to create Tulip Mania: Money, Honor and Knowledge in Golden Age Holland.“I always joke that the book should be called Tulip Mania: It's Boring Than You Think,” says Goldgar. “People love the legend because they think they can learn a lesson from it. I think this opinion is wrong."
Before putting the “tulip fever” on a par with the South Sea bubble, which happened in the 1700s in England, with the railway bubble of the 19th century, with the dot-com and bitcoin bubbles, it is worth studying a few of Professor Goldgar’s arguments and understanding what was happening in the Dutch society at the turn of the 17th century.
It's worth starting with the fact that the country experienced a major demographic shift during the War of Independence with Spain. During this period, merchants arrived in major port cities: Amsterdam, Haarlem, Delft and began trading, including the famous Dutch East India Company. This brought huge income to Holland, even despite the martial law in the country. The newly independent nation was led by an urban oligarchy of wealthy merchants, unlike other European countries of the era, which were controlled by the nobility. As a result, new faces, ideas and money helped revolutionize the Dutch economy in the late 16th century.
As the economy has changed, social interactions and cultural values have changed. A growing interest in natural history and a love of the exotic among the merchant class caused prices to rise for goods from the east, including those from the Ottoman Empire. People of all social classes had to develop in new directions, which appeared with the influx of new goods. For example, a fish auctioneer created the manuscript “The Book of Whales” and this work allowed him to meet with the President of Holland. The Dutch botanist Clusius created the botanical garden at Leiden University in 1590 and the tulip quickly rose to a place of honor.
“Wild tulips found in the valleys of the Tien Shan began to be bred in Istanbul in 1055, and in the 15th century they already became symbols of the Ottomans. For example, Sultan Mehmed II had 12 tulip gardens, which required 920 gardeners to maintain,” writes Anna Pavord, gardening correspondent for The Independent online publication, in her book “Tulips.”
The Dutch discovered that tulips can be grown from seeds and shoots of the mother bulb. It takes 7 to 12 years for a seed to grow into a bulb and a flower to bloom. And an already ripe bulb can become a tulip in a year. Of particular interest to the botanist Clusius and the “tulip speculators” were “broken bulbs.” The petals of the tulips that grew from these bulbs were not monochromatic, but multi-colored. It was impossible to predict what the future flower would look like. Naturalists came up with ways to reproduce such bulbs and buds, as the demand for this rare species constantly grew. As it turned out later, this effect was obtained due to the fact that the bulbs hurt. They were frail and rarely produced flowers.
“The high market value of tulips, which authors studying “tulip mania” write about, was caused by the prices of especially beautiful “broken bulbs,” writes economist Peter Garber, “since it was impossible to predict what a flower sprouted from such a bulb would look like.” “Tulip mania could be described as a game of chance among growers who sought to produce buds of increasingly unusual colors.”
Printed report of the results of the auction in Alkmaar on February 5, 1637. Image: Wikimedia commons
Dutch speculators spent all their money on bulbs and then grew flowers, of which perhaps only one would make a profit. “As luxury goods, tulips fit well into the culture of big money and the new cosmopolitanism,” writes Goldgar. Tulips required expertise, experience in appreciating beauty and exoticism and, of course, a lot of money.
The beginning of a legend
This is where the myth comes into play. According to popular legend, "tulip mania" swept through all levels of Dutch society in 1630. “So great was the desire of the Dutch to possess rare bulbs that the ordinary industry was abandoned, and the population, down to the lowest ranks, began to trade in tulips,” writes Scottish journalist Charles Mackay in his popular 1841 work “Extremely Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” According to this work, everyone from the richest merchants to the poorest chimney sweeps bought tulip bulbs and resold them at a higher price. The largest number of companies selling tulips was at the end of 1636, and in February the market began to burst at the seams. More and more people went bankrupt in hopes of buying the coveted bulbs, and more and more merchants, left in debt, became bankrupt. At least that's what was always thought.“In reality, few people were involved and the economic consequences were not that significant,” writes Goldgar, “I could not find information in the archives about even one bankrupt. If there really was a massive destruction of the economy, as the myth says, it would not be difficult to find the data.”
These arguments do not mean that everything in the story about “tulip mania” is fiction. Merchants actually participated in the frenzied tulip trade and paid exorbitant amounts of money for a few bulbs. And when buyers were unable to pay traders as much as they had promised in advance, the market collapsed and caused a small crisis. But only because it subverted social expectations.
“In this case, the difficulty is that almost all market relations were built on trust. Buyers promised to buy the bulbs from traders, and then said, “I don’t care that I promised to buy this. Now I don’t need this product.” The courts didn't want to get involved and so there was no one to force people to pay for the goods,” says Goldgar.
But “tulip mania” did not affect all sectors of society and did not cause the collapse of industry. “The lack of data on bankruptcies makes it difficult to draw a firm conclusion, but the results of the study suggest that speculation in tulip bulbs was not as widespread and crazy as is commonly believed,” writes economist Peter Garber.
Who spread the myth?
If “tulip mania” was not such a disaster, why was it shown in this light? It can be assumed that offended Christian moralists are to blame for this. With great wealth comes a wave of social anxiety. “The incredible level of success has gone to their heads. All the incredible stories confirming the economic devastation - the sailor thrown in jail and the chimney sweeps trying to get rich - came from propaganda pamphlets. They were spread by Dutch Calvinists, who feared that the tulip boom would lead to social decay. Their belief that this wealth was terrible has survived to this day,” writes historian Simon Schum, in his book “The Embarrassment of Wealth: Interpreting Dutch Culture in the Golden Age.”“Some ideas are ineradicable, for example the one that God does not like cunning people and sends a plague on them. That's what people might have said in 1630, says Anne Goldgar, and the idea that cunning is a sin has survived into modern society. Pride comes before a fall."
Goldgar does not condemn directors and writers for misinterpreting the past. She is dissatisfied with the incorrect conclusions that historians and economists made in their works, further spreading the idea of “tulip mania.” “I had no way of knowing that this story was a lie until I pulled up the old archives. It was an unexpected treasure,” says Goldgar.
Every avid travel lover knows the colorful fields of regular geometric shapes that can be seen when flying over Holland. Many people associate the name of this area primarily with tulips - beautiful flowers that can be found here in huge quantities. Where is Holland located, and why is this country considered the birthplace of tulips? What is the history of this area, and what interesting things awaits every guest here?
Holland or the Netherlands?
Many people confuse these two names, but they cannot be equated. The Netherlands is a country that consists of 12 provinces. Two of them together form Holland - the Land of Tulips. These are North and South Holland. However, the name “Holland” is used to refer to the entire territory of the Netherlands.
The official name of the country is the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This area is called the country of tulips due to the fact that a huge part of its territory is covered with multi-colored tulip fields, which look like the flags of different countries replacing each other.
History of the country
The territory of the Netherlands was populated quite early - back in the Neolithic era. Celtic tribes who lived in the 1st millennium BC. e., over time were supplanted by the Germans. In the 5th century, the Frankish kingdom was formed here. In the 10th-11th centuries there were several feudal estates that were part of the Roman Empire. In the 12th century, cities began to emerge in the territory of modern Netherlands, in which trade and crafts rapidly developed. In 1566, a bourgeois revolution began here, aimed at overthrowing the rule of Spain. In the 17th-18th centuries, the Dutch economy became one of the most powerful in all of Europe.
During World War II, the Netherlands declared a policy of neutrality, but was already occupied in 1940. After the end of the war, the country abandoned its traditional policy of neutrality and began to join various political organizations.
From Asia to Holland
Tulips were brought to Holland quite a long time ago - back in the middle of the 16th century. There is a version according to which these flowers were brought here from Vienna by Carlos Clausius, the creator of the apothecary garden at Leiden University. Around the same time, tulips were brought to Austria. They were sent in 1554 by an ambassador named Ogier de Brusec from the gardens of Sultan Suleiman, which were located in Constantinople. The ancestors of the beautiful flowers were a wild species called the Schrenck tulip. It grew in the vast expanses of Turkey, Kazakhstan and the Black Sea coast.
Homeland of tulips
According to another widespread version, the birthplace of the tulip was Iran, and it was from there that this flower spread to other Asian countries. Much later he came to Holland - the Land of Tulips. The word "tulip" comes from the name of the headdress it resembles - "turban".
There is a beautiful legend about this flower. Along one field, where flowers never bloomed, a woman was walking with a baby. When the child saw the flowers, he laughed joyfully, and from his happiness they opened.
So, Carlos Clusius was the man thanks to whom Holland in the future became known as the Land of Tulips. He didn’t even suspect that he would become the culprit of the sheer craze of the entire population of this country for tulips. During the Golden Age, this obsession reached a truly unprecedented scale - in order to acquire new varieties of bulbs, the Dutch were ready to give up entire fortunes, and for a tulip flower bed they easily said goodbye to rich houses and family values.
Tulips today
Today everyone knows which country tulips have been considered as a symbol since ancient times. This is the Netherlands. Holland itself is considered a cultural monument, and tulips make it even more beautiful. However, it cannot be said that after four centuries the Land of Tulips has completely cooled down to these beautiful flowers.
Naturally, in Amsterdam no one will exchange housing for a handful of rare bulbs, but these flowers still remain one of the main sources of income. Every year they bring more than 600 million euros in net income to the Dutch state treasury. The largest flower auction in the country, FloraHolland, has offices throughout the Netherlands. More than 20 million tulips and other plants are sold here every day.
Flower auctions
Tourists will be interested in visiting flower auctions. It's both funny and educational. After all, auctions are held not only to sell as many tulips as possible, but also to entertain the public.
Bidding begins at sunrise. The auction is open all year round, but the best time to visit the Land of Tulips is spring and summer. It is during these seasons that the entire territory of Holland is covered with multi-colored rectangles, on which tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and lilies bloom in turn. Kilometers of neat plantings stretch into the distance, delighting visitors to the country and local residents.
Keukenhof is the largest park
Many people are interested in where the largest and most picturesque park is located in the Land of Tulips. Let's answer: this is Keukenhof, located in Lisse. The word "Keukenhof" literally means "kitchen yard".
This flower garden is considered the largest in the world - its area is 32 hectares. Here you can see “rivers” of tulips and “banks” of hyacinths. Keukenhof is also considered a model in the field of landscape design. Every autumn, about thirty gardeners begin to create pictures of the coming spring. They plant more than 7 million bulbs in this park. The vast majority of growers provide their flowers here for free - after all, for each of them, planting their own flowerbed in Keukenhof Park is considered a great honor. At the same time, flower magnates compete with each other for the right to receive a diploma for the most beautiful flower and for the most picturesque flower bed. Everyone who has ever visited Keukenhof remembers for the rest of their lives how picturesque and unusual the Country of Tulips is.
Every year tourists can see new landscapes in this park. You can come to it every year, and every time you will be amazed at the skill of the gardeners and organizers. Breeders tirelessly develop more and more new varieties of flowers. Long before the season opens, the organizers develop the concept of the next exhibition.
In 2012, the main country at the exhibition was Poland. Guests of Keukenhof could see a portrait of Chopin made of flowers. And in 2010 the “Russian season” was opened. Here one could see various floral decorations - a hut on chicken legs, a large theater, mittens, nesting dolls. St. Basil's Cathedral was built from flowers, and the main guest was D. Medvedev's wife Svetlana. In the same year, two new varieties of flowers were developed - cream-colored tulips were called Miss Medvedeva, and pale pink ones were called Putin. In Keukenhof souvenir shops you can buy your favorite varieties of tulips.
Floriade
But Keukenhof only opens for 9 weeks. Although it is the largest park, there is a project in the Land of Tulips that surpasses Keukenhof in scale. This is a world-famous horticultural exhibition that takes place in Holland only once a decade - the Floriade.
Various cities in the Netherlands are constantly fighting for the right to host this famous exhibition. The city of Almere is a candidate to host the next Floriade, which will take place in 2022. The area where the exhibition is taking place is about 66 hectares. Usually there are not only picturesque flower beds, but also various pavilions, cinemas, recreation areas and attractions.
