A staggering, seven million flower bulbs burst into bloom, across the 32 hectares in the eight-week botanical spectacle, that is the annual Keukenhof.
The striking JUB Holland display created for the show, entitled ‘A Mysterious Dutch Still Life’, was designed by the garden and landscape designer, Carien van Boxtel. Rich in detail, van Boxtel drew inspiration from the 17th-century still life paintings of Willem van Aelst – a Dutch master of asymmetry, chiaroscuro and poetic stillness.
Since 2019, van Boxtel has been the creative force behind JUB Holland’s Keukenhof borders. Recently named an RHS Bulb Expert, she pushed her own boundaries this year with a daring colour palette of deep red, gold, yellow, and porcelain white. Even after all these weeks, the planting is still in full bloom, featuring dark-toned tulips such as ‘Sarah Raven’, ‘Queen Rania’, the fiery Tulipa acuminata, the painterly ‘Rem’s Favourite’, and the late-blooming Narcissus poeticus recurvus.
“It’s like composing with time. I treat flowering moments like notes on a score – a slow crescendo, culminating now, in this final week, in a visual climax,” explained van Boxtel.
What makes the design remarkable is not only the aesthetic beauty, but the layered complexity. Van Boxtel plays with height variations, architectural structure, and uses the foliage of anemones and daffodils, as well as the seed pods of Fritillaria persica and Fritillaria imperialis, to create rhythm and rest.
“Sometimes you need to ‘cool down’ the flowers with green,” she explains. “So the whole composition breathes – almost like a pointillist wildflower meadow.”
In doing so, the focus shifts beyond the plants themselves to the craft of planting: the interplay of form, colour, bloom time and context.
For the bulb supplier, JUB Holland the Keukenhof bulb mixes are made commercially available after the show debut, for landscape professionals across Europe. The knowledge gained from the staggered flowering, Keukehof designs is translated into applicable mixes for public green spaces – from urban verges to bespoke landscape projects.
“As one of Keukenhof’s earliest contributors and located just down the road in Noordwijkerhout, we see the park not only as an international showcase, but also as a practical test garden,” explains Robbert Uittenbogaard, Director of JUB Holland. “It’s where we present our newest mixes and demonstrate how flower bulb designs can be artistic, thoughtful, and enduringly attractive in public landscapes.”
He adds, “A good bulb mix begins with flowering, but it only succeeds when everything comes together – the rhythm of the landscape, the maintenance, the biodiversity. That’s what we design – based on practical knowledge. We’re seeing that the story behind a design – the play of colour, bloom timing, the cultural theme – truly resonates with landscape architects, municipalities and green space managers. We want to inspire them and support them with ready-made solutions that are visually impactful and ecologically sound.”
The fourth generation, Dutch bulb specialist, JUB Holland, established in 1910, has been exhibiting at Keukenhof since the show’s first year. The company provides long-flowering, biodiverse bulb mixtures for gardeners, landscapers and retailers across the world.
A Mysterious Dutch Still Life can still be viewed in full bloom at Keukenhof until Sunday, the 11th of May.
