The stunning bulb gardens
From Western Europe (well without France) in Lisse, Netherlands on Mar 30 '09
I had intended to go to Keukenhof gardens from Haarlem which is much closer and you can actually get a tourist bus directly from the station there. But the weather conspired against me and I spent that day in the Hague instead. I was determined not to miss out on the gardens though so I made the day trip from Rotterdam. It’s quite easy to make the trip from most of the cities in the Southern Netherlands really. You catch the train to Leiden which is on a busy line between Amsterdam and Rotterdam and from there you can catch a bus directly to the gardens. You can even buy a combined ticket for the bus and the gardens to save you having to queue when you get there. It works out at being slightly cheaper than if you bought the bus strips on the bus and the ticket at the gardens. You can buy these tickets at the money exchange place near the exit at Leiden Centraal station.
I grabbed my ticket and headed out to find the bus stop. It does have a signpost but handily it was being blocked by another bus. The bus station is right out the front of the train station and there are seven or so bays for the buses. The trick is that the bus to the gardens doesn’t leave from one of the bays. It leaves from the street that is literally right next to the station (near platform 7 in the bus station). The buses go every fifteen minutes for the entire day until about an hour before closing time (I think) so it doesn’t matter if you miss one. The trip is easy from there because the bus drops you right outside the main entrance of the park and the return bus stop is in the same place so when you are finished you just line up again for the no54 and it takes you back to the train station. Bus 58 goes to Schipol Airport near Amsterdam.
There weren’t as many people as I thought there would be (there are 800000 visitors over 8 weeks so there has to be a fair few a day) when I arrived but it seems that a lot of people come later in the day. You can buy a map of the park and a little guide book thing from the girls in traditional Dutch costumes at the entrance but it’s really not necessary. There are signs up throughout the park and you can just wander and you’ll eventually see everything. When you first enter into the garden there is a fountain and a street organ that plays away all day and you can hear in much of the park. It plays some classics but I also heard New York New York and Sexbomb in there at one stage. If you like it you can buy the CD from behind the stand. I headed left (past the organ) after going in as it seemed that most of the park is that way.
I was initially a little disappointed as many of the tulips aren’t flowering yet and I can go and see crocus in the park for free but there was more to come. The garden has three large pavilions that have flowers in them and the type does vary as the season goes on. The first house that I arrived at was the Oranje-Nassau house and I didn’t realize that it actually has flowers in it. I just went in to look for a toilet (which by the way you have to pay for throughout the park) and stumbled across the flower show. This house at the moment has chrysanthemums as well as a fashion show of clothes inspired by flowers. There are some spectacular blooms in there. Feeling much better about things, I headed out to the fountains that are around this building and walked through to the view point on a mound behind the distant fountain. The view points actually give better views of the fields surrounding the park than the park itself. I think that the fields have flowers in them if you are there at the right time but at the moment are just green. I continued on through the demonstration gardens to the windmill. It’s one that they moved here from somewhere in Groningen province in the early days of the garden. It’s still functioning and you can climb up onto it and look at the fields as well. You can’t stand on the side which overlooks the garden because of the sails.
I then headed into the Japanese garden which doesn’t have much in it yet because it is mostly in the shade. It comes out near to the next pavilion which contains the warmer climate flowers like orchids and bromeliads. It’s just stunning inside with so many different colours and types of orchids. It also has platform so that you can go up and see the flowers from above. From there, I wandered through the middle section of the park which doesn’t have a huge amount of bulbs flowering yet, really just a few daffodils here and there. They are working hard on it though. There is a huge team of gardeners who must work really long hours in the lead up to the season. It’s hard physical work too as the beds are quite wide in a lot of places and there is no room within the bed to stand or sit so they basically have to do a hover out over the garden while they weed with one hand. They must have abs of steel.
The final large flower pavilion has the tulips, narcissi, hippocanthus and a few others that I don’t recall the names of in it. This one has beds within the floor of the pavilion so the plants are in soil in the ground but have a large greenhouse over them. It is absolutely stunning in this building and I spent well over an hour wandering around looking at all the different varieties of bulb. There was a couple getting their wedding photos taken here which will come out really well (despite all the people around). This is where many of the photos come from. There is a restaurant at one end as well, so you can sit and look at the flowers.
I was hungry but decided to head onto the next restaurant because the food at this one didn’t look so great. Unfortunately, all three of the restaurants in the park sell the same terrible food and it is really expensive. If you can bring your own because there are plenty of places to sit and have a picnic. I couldn’t because all the shops were closed on Sunday in Rotterdam and I left before they opened in the morning but I wish that I’d brought something with me. I ended up eating a piece of apple cake and a luke warm hot chocolate (that tasted like a warmed up Big M) and the cake wasn’t bad but cost more than $6 so it should have been good. The sandwiches were the only decent looking food and they were mostly gone by the time I made it to having lunch.
At the café, I met up with an Italian woman whom I had met on the bus on the way to the park and we walked around together in the sunshine for a while. It’s a very pleasant place just to walk around and see what you can find. There are lots of places within the park that sell the bulbs though they aren’t cheap and you don’t get them until later in the year. They let them all finish flowering and then dig them up and ship them to you. It does make it easy to know exactly what the flower is going to look like though.
At about 3pm I decided that I really should be heading back to Rotterdam as I had at least an hour travelling to get there, so I jumped back on the bus and headed out.
I had a wonderful day at the gardens and would recommend it to anyone even if you aren’t a flower person. It would be a great place to visit with a group and you could spend hours on the lawns on a nice day. Admittedly it wouldn’t be so good if the weather was bad so if you have some leeway, choose a good day. I would definitely take food if I went again as it was very expensive and there was not much variety. You can stay up until 8pm which would be good after the last weekend in March as daylight savings starts then. It could be a very pleasant spot to sit with a picnic on a warm evening (they do occasionally have them in Europe). It’s an expensive day but a very worthwhile one and you can get all those pictures of tulips that you want to show everyone back home (including the ones with a windmill in the background).
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