It was in 1562 that the first tulip bulbs arrived in the port of Antwerp. Flemish scientist and botanist Carolus Clusius gave the flowers their name, Tulipa. Antwerp printer Christoffel Plantijn and painter Maarten de Vos published the first images of the flower, triggering an interest all over Europe.
While the world’s largest display of tulips is at Keukenhof in Lisse, between Den Haag and Haarlem, the Antwerp district of Zandvliet played a pioneering role in the popularisation and distribution of tulips until the mid-20th century.
Designer and landscape architect Ronald van der Hilst is a tulip specialist. He has been commissioned to design a garden of 10,000 tulips for the Arboretum in Kalmthout, where he wants to recreate the atmosphere of Antwerp’s 16th- and 17th-century gardens by next spring.
“Today, the tulip is somewhat disrespectfully regarded as a ‘fast food flower’,” say van der Hilst. “But the 17th-century tulips were a status symbol of sophistication and wealth. Only the rich could afford tulip bulbs. The alternative was having tulips painted as still-lifes by master painters – paintings that have become priceless today. Peter Paul Rubens could afford to have some tulips in his garden, and when he married Hélène Fourment, she was given three tulip bulbs as a wedding present.”
For 100 years, the tulip business has been dominated by Dutch growers, notes van der Hilst, “limited to some 25 species out of the 4,000, and mainly growing for the cut-flower market and not for garden purposes. Tulips have become a mass product, from haute couture to ready-to-wear.”
Mil Eestermans is a grower of bulbs and head of the Eestermans family enterprise in Zandvliet, a district of Antwerp. “The first tulips in Zandvliet were planted by Dutch farmers,” he remembers. “My father, Louis, started as a tulip grower in 1934 and established the company, employing 14 workers here. With some three million tulip bulbs per year, he started exporting the flowers to France and Germany.”
Eestermans, 71, looks back fondly to the spring months when the tulips bloomed. “In the tulip harvest season, the polder was an immense 150,000 square-metre flower carpet,” he says. “People came from everywhere to witness the beauty of the flowers.” Tulip harvest became, then, a perfect opportunity to organise fairs. “We had tents in the fields with people celebrating.”
The Eestermans family suffered a major loss as a consequence of the 1953 winter flood, when all the bulbs were inundated with salt water. They were able to restore the business, but, in 1970, they decided to stop the growing of tulips.
“The combination of increasing personnel expenses, the stabilisation of the flower price and the ongoing expansion of the Antwerp port eating away fertile polder land were elements that urged us to stop,” explains Eestermans. “From then on, we concentrated on cultivating and exporting bulbs all over Europe. Today, we produce up to two million bulbs per year, one-third being tulips.”
With 2012 designated as the Year of the Tulip in Flanders and the Netherlands, Antwerp city council and the Berendrecht-Zandvliet-Lillo district decided to commemorate the arrival of tulips here by planting some 160,000 bulbs in a number of different varieties and colours. In October, the district’s senior citizens were invited to plant the first bulbs in huge flower beds; the rest of the bulbs, supplied by the Eestermans, were planted by a specialised company.
The city of Antwerp’s Bomenbank, or tree department, is coordinating the tulip planting and harvesting. “It’s a nice showpiece and opportunity to highlight what we do,” enthuses Bomenbank coordinator Dirk Janssens. “Although growing tulips is not part of our regular business, it’s a unique project. All the district’s green sites will be covered in tulips, replacing the traditional violets and yearlings.”
The World Tulip Summit happens every two years, and will take place in 2012 in Venlo on 26 and 27 September and in Antwerp on 28 September. It is focussed on spreading knowledge, promoting tulip events and celebrating the flower as a symbol of friendship and peace. The district of Berendrecht-Zandvliet-Lillo is taking advantage of the summit to revive the flower’s heritage, and will celebrate with a public fair next spring.
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