Tulips are native to Turkey and were not introduced to our country until the 16th century. The word tulip comes from the Latin word Tulipa: the flower that resembles a turban.

In the 16th century, the tulip came to the Netherlands. The botanist Carolus Clusius played an important role in this. Through his network, the tulip reached many wealthy people in our country. In the seventeenth century, the tulip became so popular that a real wind trade developed, in which a lot of money was paid for a single tulip. After that wind trade, the tulip remained popular in the Netherlands. Commercial cultivation expanded in the nineteenth century from Haarlem towards the Flower Bulb Region, and in the twentieth century it also reached other parts of the Netherlands, such as the tip of North Holland and West Friesland.

Tulips in Northeast Polder
The polder officially fell dry on 9 September 1942. After that, Northeast Polder was laid out and developed at lightning speed. This created a unique agricultural area. In the early 1960s, the first tulips were planted in the polder. The soil in Northeast Polder is particularly suitable for this. Today, some 2,000 hectares of tulips are planted every year. Together, these produce almost 1 billion saleable bulbs. Besides tulips, lilies, gladioli and blue grapes are also grown in Noordoostpolder. Noordoostpolder is the third largest bulb-growing area in the Netherlands in terms of surface area.

Also tulips in winter
Tulips bloom mainly in spring. Yet it has long been possible to buy flowering tulips at other times of the year too: this is the work of tulip growers, known as foragers. Foragers buy tulip bulbs in the summer to draw them into bloom in winter. In autumn, the tulip bulbs receive a temperature treatment in a cold store. The bulb then thinks it is winter. After that cold, the forager takes the tulips to a warm greenhouse where the bulb turns into a flowering tulip within a few weeks. The flowers are cut off and sold in bunches. In summer, the process starts all over again.