Festival for tulips in Amsterdam - 31st January 2024

It's easy to find tulips in the Netherlands. It's the largest producer of tulips and every year, it exports about three billion. The start of the tulip season is the third Saturday of January, National Tulip Day.

A local DJ, Hardwell, opened this year's festival in Amsterdam. He's really pleased. There's a new tulip - 'Hardwell' - which is named after him.

Robbert van de Corput (stage name, Hardwell): "I like tulips, I like flowers in general. I think it's amazing and well, as I mentioned, like, a tulip is such a special flower and I'm really honoured to have, well, one named after me now."

Visitors are invited to pick tulips for free. For Claire Hanssen, a student, the flowers are wonderful and colourful. That's especially important during winter.

Claire Hanssen, Student: "I think they're very beautiful and considering how cold and grey it's been, I think it's very nice to bring colour into the house."

Most people think of the Netherlands when they think of tulips. But the flower was first found in the mountains of Central Asia. They were brought to the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. Before long, they became very popular. They were an important product for trade. The round tulip bulbs were more expensive than gold.

In 1637, the tulip market crashed. But the love for the bright flowers continues. Rotchel, from the Philippines, is enjoying the experience. Tulips aren't typical in her home country.

Rotchel Mae Padulaga: "Well, it's like a beautiful flowers and it's not, it's very rare to see because we doesn't have that in the Philippines so, that's really really makes us happy to see the tulips and experience that by ourselves here."