Amazingly, it’s just a four-hour drive on the A4 through Antwerp and north into the Netherlands to get to the start of the famous Dutch flower route. Flowers have long been the stuff of romantic gestures, but blooms are a big deal in the Netherlands, the country which has dominated the global flower trade since tulip mania caused the world’s first commodity boom here during the Dutch Golden Age.
The Flower Route is an unforgettable trip starting in the northern city of Haarlem, home to the Frans Hals Museum. Hindsight may have crowned Rembrandt as the foremost painter of the Golden Age, but Frans Hals was at the time the undisputed master of the canvas.
The museum is home to still-life paintings bearing witness to the great man’s fascination with blooms, and in spring the museum is ablaze with the real thing, as rooms and corridors are decorated with fresh bouquets in unusual vases designed by the students of the Netherlands’ most prestigious design academies. The city itself throngs with crocuses, daffodils and, of course, tulips.
Head down the N206 to see garden living at its glorious best. The buitenplaats Plantage is a grand greenhouse cafe in Vogelenzang village serving organic food sourced from its impressive gardens, where hammocks hang from trees and the living is easy. There’s a garden centre right next door should you wish to take some greenery home for your own garden.
Then it’s onwards through the tulip fields of Lisse – the optimum time to go for the most blooms is April but the flowers start to appear from late January – and then to the idyllic seaside town of Noordwijk. The original “beach and bulbs” destination, Noordwijk blossomed into the floral seaside resort of Europe in the mid-19th century, when days out at the beach became a fashionable activity for the elite and seawater and bathing machines were believed to have a restorative effect. The combination of dunes and colourful fields ensures that Noordwijk continues to charm.
The deluxe rooms at the chic Vesper boutique hotel overlook the ever-shifting waves of the North Sea, and if you’re really looking to push the boat out, the hotel can arrange a special “Chef’s lunch” on the beach.
Once you’ve had your fill, drive onwards to Wassenaar, and the Museum Voorlinden – a brand new contemporary-art institution filled with the sizeable private collection of businessman Joop van Caldenborgh. The gardens here are a work of art themselves, having been dreamt up by the modern master of Dutch landscape design, Piet Oudolf, famed for his designs for the High Line in New York City and the Millennium Park in Chicago. Oudolf’s grand vision echoes the tradition of classical gardens, modernised with bold drifts of herbaceous perennials and grasses. The gardens are visible from inside the museum as well as outside, providing a pleasant, gorgeous blend of art, architecture and nature that is quintessentially Dutch.