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For eight weeks every year, a garden on the edge of a small Dutch town becomes the most photographed place on earth. Seven million tulips, 700 varieties, laid out across 32 hectares of formal beds and woodland paths. It’s called Keukenhof, and if you can time a Netherlands trip to see it, you should.
The basics
Keukenhof is open from roughly the third week of March to the second week of May — the exact dates vary slightly each year. Peak bloom is usually the third week of April, but the early daffodils and hyacinths start the show in late March, and the latest varieties linger into mid-May.
It’s not free. Adult tickets are around €20, and you should buy them online in advance — the queues at the gate can be brutal on weekends.
Keukenhof vs the fields
Here’s the thing most first-time visitors don’t realise: Keukenhof is a garden, not a field. It’s beautifully designed, with curated beds arranged by colour and variety — the kind of place a landscape architect would love. The famous endless rows of red and yellow tulips stretching to the horizon, the ones in every Netherlands photograph you’ve ever seen — those are on commercial flower farms outside the garden, in the Bollenstreek region between Haarlem and Leiden.
You want both. Do Keukenhof in the morning and then rent a bike from one of the stands near the entrance and cycle through the actual fields in the afternoon. The route is flat, the roads are quiet, and the fields roll out on either side of you in stripes of impossible colour. This is the real Dutch spring.
A few honest warnings
Keukenhof on a sunny Saturday in April is the opposite of tranquil. Tour buses disgorge crowds by the hundred; the main paths are a slow-moving river of people. Go on a weekday, and go early (it opens at 8am). The first hour is genuinely magical. By 11am you’ll be shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone else.
The weather in April is Dutch, which means it can rain four times in an afternoon. Bring a waterproof jacket; sunglasses; a scarf. You’ll thank us.