The Noordoostpolder is one of the largest tulip areas in the Netherlands. Every year in April and May, the colourful fields are in bloom again and the annual Noordoostpolder Tulip Festival is organised. The tulip is a special product. We are happy to tell you more about it on this page. Will you come and admire our tulips this year?
Every autumn, tulip bulbs are planted in many fields in the Noordoostpolder. And then it's a matter of waiting to see what the weather will do and when they will bloom in the spring. In February or March, a good estimate can be made and the start and end dates for the annual Noordoostpolder Tulip Festival are set. This year, it will take place from Friday 17 April to Sunday 3 May. We are already looking forward to it!
The Tulip Festival Noordoostpolder is based on the (free) car and cycle routes along the blooming tulip fields. By following the signposted routes, you will see most of the tulips along the way. The 102-kilometre car route is the longest continuous route in the Netherlands. This year, the cycle route is 33 kilometres long.
You can download the routes to take with you on your mobile phone, or as a PDF to print out, if you prefer. A nice addition to the car route is the Tulip Festival app, which provides information about the area, tulip cultivation and the history of the Noordoostpolder via video and audio clips while you are driving the route.
Picking tulips? That's not allowed anywhere, except in the Tulip Picking Garden in Marknesse. Choose the most beautiful tulips and make your own bouquet. This way, you can create a beautiful and unique souvenir of your visit to the tulip fields of the Noordoostpolder. The Tulip Picking Garden is open from 8 April to 6 May. Admission to the Tulip Picking Garden costs £2.50 per person. A bucket containing a maximum of 30 hand-picked tulips costs £12.50.
Finished picking? Then climb the observation tower for the most beautiful view of the tulips or enjoy a cup of coffee on the terrace. And if you come by bicycle, this is a welcome stopover to relax with a drink and enjoy the colourful view.
The Tulip Experience Field in Creil is a beautiful location to stretch your legs, drink a cup of coffee and take photos surrounded by tulips. Yes, really, whereas elsewhere along the route you are expected to admire the tulips from a distance, in the Tulip Experience Field you can stand right in the middle of them!
The Tulip Experience Field features a sea of 200 varieties of mixed tulips, which you can stroll through at your leisure. There is also a tulip show garden with 300 varieties of tulips and a special selfie field for romantic photos. You can also take photos from the footbridge. Admission to the Tulip Experience Field is free.
A stop that no tulip lover should miss is the Tulip Variety Garden, where volunteers plant hundreds of tulip varieties every year. The Tulip Variety Garden is a unique collection of historical and special tulip varieties. This makes it the ideal place to discover the wealth of shapes, colours and stories behind the tulip.
In the Tulip Variety Garden, you can enter the tulip field and take photographs among the tulips. There is also an information board by the road and guides are present at weekends who can tell you everything about the tulips. Guided tours for groups are also available by appointment.
In addition to the Tulip Picking Garden, the Tulip Variety Garden and the Tulip Experience Field, there are two other tulip festival locations along the (car) route. Here you can stretch your legs and buy something to eat and/or drink. Bollie the Bear has also organised fun children's activities here.
At the Renne Streekproducten farm shop, you can find fresh vegetables, delicious fruit and other locally produced food all year round. With a cosy terrace with food trucks and a beautiful catering location, this is the ideal stopover during the Tulip Festival Noordoostpolder while driving the Tulip Route. Children can enjoy themselves on the bouncy castle at Renne Streekproducten and also discover the different types of soil in a playful way by feeling them with their bare feet.
Restaurant Bij Ons in de Wellerwaard is located in the nature and recreation area of the same name, De Wellerwaard. The restaurant is on the tulip motorway and is only a short detour from the tulip cycle route. You can enjoy all kinds of small dishes both inside and outside on the terrace (on the beach and overlooking the lake). Bij Ons in de Wellerwaard is also a Bollie the Bear activity location. Here, children learn about the different crops that grow in the Noordoostpolder.
17 April until 3 May
18 April, 19 April and 2 more days
25 and 26 April
After the land that is now the Noordoostpolder had been reclaimed from the sea in 1942, a large part of the area was dedicated to agriculture. The first tulip bulbs were planten in the sixties. The erstwhile sea bed proved to be furtile ground and very suitable for cultivating tulips. The tulips grow very well because of the minerals in the soil. Many agriculturists have settled in the Noordoostpolder and with around 2000 hectares of tulip fields this polder has become one of the largest tulip areas in the Netherlands, with a production of almost one billion marketable bulbs each year!
The tulip is generally considered to be a typically Dutch flower, but it actually has its origin in Turkey. The word tulip stems from the Latin word Tulipa: the flower that looks like a turban. Sailors brought the tulip to the Netherlands in the sixteenth century, where it quickly became a popular flower among the affluent part of the population. So popular, in fact, that a veritable tulip mania arose: the tulips became increasingly valuable until eventually the entire bulb market collapsed. The tulip trade had become the first economic soap bubble to burst in the Netherlands...
Tulips usually flower from mid-April to early May, but exact dates are hard to predict. This stems from the tulip's growth and flowering reacting to weather conditions such as temperature and amount of rain. Also, different tulip species may flower at slightly different times.
Do you want to know when the best time to visit the tulips fields is? Then check out the 'tulip bloom meter' of the Tulip Festival. The flowering percentage is updated daily, but only during the annual tulip festival. It shows you which percentage of the tulips is flowering that day.
The entire Noordoostpolder is a feast of colour in spring. Such a beautiful sight! But please enjoy our tulips from a distance and don't enter the fields. If you do enter the fields, you may damage or bring diseases to the tulips, with great consequences for the farmer. You are also not supposed to park your car on the farmers' grounds. This is their private property and their personal living space, which we must respect. Parking alongside the road and taking picures from the road's shoulder is perfectly fine, though. Just make sure to check both ways before crossing the road...
Did you know that the tulip bulbs in the fields are actually cultivated for the bulbs, not for the flowers? After a thorough selection and a field inspection, the flowers are topped, or deadheaded: the flowers are removed from the stems. Such a waste, you might think. But this way all the plant's energy goes into the bulb instead of to the flower and it's the bulbs that are sold afterwards.
The bulbs are unearthed and harvested in late June. The bulbs that are big enough will be sold, mostly to growers who grow them into flowers for both national and international florist shops. If the bulb is not yet big enough, it will be planted again in the fall for a new round of growing, flowering en topping. See you again next year!
Enjoy an atmospheric impression of our tulip fields here.
