Fortunately, the flowers managed to tame the masses, offering colorful islands of exquisite tranquility in the midst of all the madness.
In 1857 landscape architects Jan David Zocher and his son Louis Paul Zocher fashioned an English landscape style garden for the current castle residents, the Baron and Baroness Van Pallandt. By 1949 the small town of Lisse, where these original hunting grounds are now located, decided Keukenhof would be the perfect place for growers from all over the Netherlands and Europe to showcase their hybrids from mid-March to mid-May – and to help the Dutch export industry. Must have done the trick – the Netherlands is the world’s largest exporter of flowers!