Stripy Rainbow Tulips at Holland's flower garden, the Keukenof

At an early age, I must have decided that flowers
could be stripy rainbow colors.
Orbiting above the flower and the earth,
I think it might be John Glenn,
also in rainbow color.
Our TVs were black and white
but our imagination was in color.

Keukenof is world famous for its spring flowering bulb displays. Their English landscape style garden near Amsterdam is huge. It takes a couple of hours to see the gardens.

In my family, flowers are not necessarily everyone's favorite thing to look at in large quantities, but luckily it was Mother's Day when we visited. And so I was able to cash in on that happy circumstance. I am so glad we went. It was the last weekend they were open to the public and many of the beds had already finished up. There was still an amazing display of flowers.

Click to see the full size map.

Check out all the different forms and colors here from my photos. It was astounding...especially to see that my stripy rainbow flowers are very real. I will eventually try to get their names on the pictures. If you want to see all the forms of tulips (single early, double early, triumph, Darwin hybrid, single late, lily flowering, fringed, viridifolia, Rembrandt, Parrot, double late, Kaufmanniana, Fosteriana, Gregii, and species) check out the The Tulip Gallery. If you want to see what the wild (species) tulip looks like, go to Tulips in the Wild.

Even when the tulips are finished, the gardeners make it look beautiful.

Photo from nursery catalog, which date?

A local aside: In my town of Fremont, there used to be an annual bulb show at the California Nursery. Local girls and local college students dressed up in Dutch and Mexican costumes. Mariachi bands played. Thousands of people came from all over to see the floral display.