Netherlands (Bollenstreek bulb region)
AA-2026-9CE1C3
On the image
Somebody in the Dutch bulb trade had a system, and the system involved little white placards on sticks, numbered like exhibits at a trial because that is essentially what they were. Row 41 held its red tulips, row 86 its ruffled yellow ones, each variety planted in a tight, weed-free block so that growers and buyers could walk the paths and judge which cultivar deserved a contract for next year's export catalogue.
The two visitors strolling past in short sleeves were not there for the scenery, though the scenery was doing quite a lot of the work anyway. Tulip trial fields in the Netherlands were run with the seriousness of a stock exchange, since a good showing here could decide which bulb ended up in gardens across half of Europe and North America the following spring.
No one in the photograph seems to be reading the numbers, which is the real joke of any well-organised system: the labels exist entirely for people who are not currently in the picture.
The historian's note
The scene shows a bulb-trial or show garden in the tulip-growing districts of the Netherlands, most likely in the bulb-growing region around Lisse or the Bollenstreek, where such fields were maintained annually to test and display named tulip cultivars for the horticultural trade.
Numbered markers beside each bed identified specific registered varieties for growers, wholesalers, and visiting buyers, a practice central to the Dutch bulb export industry that supplied tulip stock internationally throughout the twentieth century. By the 1960s these trial gardens had also become a seasonal tourist attraction, drawing visitors during the brief spring bloom alongside the professional buyers who were the fields' original audience.
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Numbered Tulip Trial Beds, Netherlands, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-9CE1C3. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/numbered-tulip-trial-beds-netherlands-1960s.
@misc{aaAA20269CE1C3,
title = {Numbered Tulip Trial Beds, Netherlands, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-9CE1C3},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/numbered-tulip-trial-beds-netherlands-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - Numbered Tulip Trial Beds, Netherlands, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-9CE1C3 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/numbered-tulip-trial-beds-netherlands-1960s ER -
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