As the shortest days of winter are behind us, spring anticipation begins – and for some the blooming spring season can’t start early enough. On Tuesday 20 February 2024 at the Garden Press Event at the Business Design Centre in London (UK), Keukenhof, Rijnbeek Perennials, and JUB Holland join forces to offer the British garden media an exclusive peek at what they have in store for the new season of Keukenhof, open from 21 March to 12 May 2024.
Keukenhof keeps evolving
The 2024 edition of Keukenhof marks its 75th jubilee, celebrating not only the colourful past but even more a promising future, with focus on innovation and intensified cooperation with the Dutch floricultural industry. Flower exhibition Keukenhof proves to be still evolving. The spring park is a favourite place to enjoy blooming tulips, daffodils, and other bulb flowers. It offers traditionally designed borders as well as modern landscaping and keeps on surprising its visitors with the newest creations.
As in a true Bulb Mania, Keukenhof’s focus is on the 7 million spring-flowering bulbs. Yet, there are so many more stories to tell and new ideas to share. Like the interesting combination of bulb-grown flowers and perennials. The challenge with perennials has always been that when Keukenhof is open, most perennials do not flower yet - for Rijnbeek Perennials a challenge they are happy to take on. Rijnbeek is the perennials specialist with a product range of over 5.000 varieties; a household name and reliable partner for landscape designers all over the world. The company from Boskoop (NL) has been sharing its ideas with Keukenhof and took the initiative to make a bold selection of early flowering plants and perennials with extraordinary leaf colours and textures. Beautiful products that will perform well in early spring and match great with naturalising bulbs. Rijnbeek reached out to JUB Holland to team up and present a Keukenhof debut: a 235 m2mixed flowering field of bulbs and perennials.
JUB Holland has been a Keukenhof exhibitor of the first hour, showing visitors their expertise in long-flowering bulb mixtures. In recent years JUB got the opportunity to deliver their own creative designs alongside their supply of flower bulbs. In close cooperation with the Keukenhof team, garden and landscape designer Carien van Boxtel has been designing unique combinations of colours and varieties for JUB Holland’s borders in the park every year since 2019. For the presentation of Rijnbeek and JUB, Van Boxtel designed a lively meadow-style field, offering prolonged flowering and an exciting, colourful metamorphosis over the course of Keukenhof’s 8 week opening period. After the season ends, the gardeners of Keukenhof usually take the bulbs out of the ground. In autumn, the cycle of planting, flowering, and digging up begins again. The new perennial border of Rijnbeek and JUB Holland will remain in the ground, mature and rebloom even more lavishly and colourful in the years to come.
Bulbs & Perennials – the perfect match
With their joint border at Keukenhof, Rijnbeek and JUB demonstrate how well naturalising bulbs and perennials work together. It is an efficient way to increase biodiversity early in the year and to widely extend the flowering time. Perennials form a highly attractive display together with bulbs and even cover up finished flowers and leaves after their peak.
Like their bulbs and perennials, the Dutch family businesses Rijnbeek Perennials and JUB Holland seem to be a great match too. The companies find each other on themes like sustainability and environmentally friendly production, both being at the forefront in finding innovative, durable solutions. With their joint passions and sense of responsibility, they offer their mutual customers in landscaping, retail, and mail order all kinds of products and tools to make a difference. From sustainably grown and organic flower bulbs to an extensive range of bulb mixtures suitable and attractive to bees and butterflies (JUB Holland), and from landscape design concept with 100 % peat-free plants to climate adaptive retail solutions (Rijnbeek Perennials).
The aim is to be more green throughout the chain, bring back the natural balance, work with the seasons, maximise outdoor space - and to encourage and enable gardeners to do the same. This season, it all comes together at Keukenhof.
Spring starts early at the Garden Press Event
While visitors of Keukenhof must wait until 21 March to enjoy the new perennial meadow-style border, British journalists, broadcasters, freelance writers and influencers get the first look on 20 February. During the Garden Press Event, organised by the HTA, GIMA and partners, the 3 Dutch companies will be among a diverse array of exhibitors to bring their new products, themes and stories to the attention of the movers and shakers of the UK garden media, right at the start of the gardening season. Keukenhof, JUB Holland and Rijnbeek Perennials will present in a joint stand (nr. H141-H142) with their unique, early flowering show presentation.
