Typically Dutch: National Tulip Day
The official cut tulip season 2023 was opened under great interest. Tulpen Promotie Nederland (TPN) held its first National Tulip Day on the Museumplein in Amsterdam on Saturday, January 21, 2023. The highlight was the picking garden with 200,000 tulips, where the public was allowed to pick them for free. Olympic skating champion Irene Schouten was guest of honor and christened a new tulip ('Dutch Pearl') and performed the opening ceremony.
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Chairman of TPN Arjan Smit: “National Tulip Day has become a world-class event with many international visitors. There was also a lot of interest from the domestic and foreign press, and tulips were trending topics on social media. We couldn't have imagined a better start to the tulip season, as retail in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK is also on the rise.”
National Tulip Day was themed ‘Typical Dutch’, and there were several references to Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. For example, the design of the picking garden was based on a detail from one of his paintings, and the gardeners were visited by the artworks ‘The Milkmaid' and 'The Girl with the Pearl Earring’. The white and pink ‘Dutch Pearl’ christened by Irene Schouten was a reference to the latter.
About Tulip Day
National Tulip Day has been around since 2012, marking the start of a new tulip season every year on the third Saturday in January. Until the end of April (for about 100 days), the Dutch tulip is available worldwide in more than 1,000 different varieties. From bright yellow to dark purple, from lily-shaped to fringed, and from bicolored to flowered. The Netherlands is the largest producer of tulips in the world, with around 2 billion stems per season.
