European Gardens In The Spring
Magnificent Color!

One of the most colorful places in all of Holland is Keukenhof Gardens between Haarlem and Leiden. The gardens are open only six weeks during the Spring when the Dutch tulip and other bulb growers show off their new varieties. In November, the gardens are open for a short time so that the bulbs can be planted.

Keukenhof is the largest flower garden in the world with more than six million bulbs in the garden’s soil, blooming at different times during that magic six weeks for visitors from all over the world. There are three greenhouses which also include masses of bulbs and other flowering plants and even flower arrangements that are made from the floral abundances. The park, with its swans and lake, invites visitors just to stroll among the beauty and “enjoy Spring” and the literally thousands of Dutch citizens and visitors seem to do that. A leisurely walk through the gardens is a close-up look at infinite beauty.

Here, thanks to the interest in horticulture and the travels of Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden, who acquired the island in 1853, there are multitudes of flowers, a forest which includes giant redwoods among the other trees, and a greenhouse where almost every species of orchid grows and thrives.

But the greenhouse, or “winterhouse” as they call it, was most fascinating. Along with the orchids were citrus trees, banana trees, palm trees and even parrots and other tropical birds. The orchids cascading from the trees were absolutely unbelievable. When the threat of cold weather is gone, the “winterhouse” is dismantled and the tropical garden is open to the sky. Thanks to the circumstance that Lake Constance acts as a thermal reservoir, the warmth from the lake seems to invade the tropical area and keep the aura alive.

Today, the island is owned by Count Lennart Bernadotte who inherited it from his grandmother, Queen Victoria of Sweden, who was the daughter of Grand Duke Friedrich of Baden. Count Bernadotte gave the island its present form and opened it for visitors. The Count was president of the German Garden Society from 1955 to 1983 when Countess Sonja took over. According to the guide, many activities sponsored by the German Garden Society continue to emanate from Mainau.

On Mainau each season is different. In the summer, roses and rose gardens take the spotlight from reports from such reputable landscape architects as Bob Rucker and Richard B. Myrick, FASLA, it is magnificent at that time, too. The same obvious diligence which went into planting the bulbs, has gone into every other facet of the floral island. Three dimensional floral plant sculptures adorn the “children land” at Mainau in the summer and have become a special attraction for both young and old in the Mainau gardens.

You can mention other gardens in Europe and they are fairly well known but The Isle of Mainau is not so well known internationally, although it is obviously well known in the area. It is a place that definitely should not be missed, in fact a European trip just to Mainau and to Switzerland would not be a bad idea almost any time of the year.

Switzerland was beautiful with the wild flowers just beginning to come up and the fruit trees blooming against a backdrop of the snow covered Alps. We didn’t visit any “gardens” in Switzerland?EUR??,,????'???the next stop was France!

Editor’s Note: The gardens of France and England that were on the tour will be covered in an upcoming issue of Landscape Architfct & Specifier News.