Today Tammy Williams of Peidmont, South Dakota, is sharing an astonishing display she was lucky enough to enjoy.

She writes:

I had the good fortune to visit the Keukenhof Tulip Festival in the Netherlands. There are over 7 million tulip, daffodil, and hyacinth bulbs along with other plants planted in this 77-acre park. It was absolutely beautiful! There are also pavilions filled with displays of many other types of flowers, including giant hydrangeas, lilies, amaryllis, and many others.

A field of tulips in bloom at a bulb growers, where they produce the bulbs that we buy and plant each fall. If you look closely, you’ll see a couple of yellow flowers snuck into the reds. That is why bulb growers allow the plants to flower each spring—so they can remove the interlopers and make sure everything they’re selling is the right variety. Later, they’ll cut all those flowers off to make sure the tulip puts all its strength into growing a bigger bulb, not producing seeds.

Hyacinths! Can you image how good this smelled?

These glowing, fiery colors of tulips show how well pairing similar, but slightly different, colors together can work.

At Keukenhof, they use tulips and other bulbs almost like paint, creating huge splashes that sweep across the landscape. Most of us don’t have quite this much space, but you can create the same effect at home by putting in dense plantings of individual varieties.

Tulips don’t have to be hot and fiery. These warm shades of melon and rose make a soothing picture.

Varying heights as well as a colors adds more interest and diversity to a design.

The curves and length of the paths is emphasized by running thick lines of tulips along them.

Brightly colored tulips as far as the eye can see!

These tulips look all the bigger and brighter for being combined with a low carpet of purple grape hyacinths. Mixing contrasting colors like this can make all the colors look even bolder.

Keukenhof isn’t all big beds of a single variety. Here many different tulips mix in a cloud of white anemone and hyacinth.

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