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A prolonged winter in the Netherlands has given a French character to the annual flower parade, Blomencorso, this year.
The parade – in which flower-decked vehicles are displayed along the main roads from Noordwijk to Harlem, near Amsterdam, a route over 40 km long – attracts over a million visitors. Spread over two days with stopovers en route, the parade costs about € 4,00,000.
“This year, due to the long winter, we had fewer flowers. So the hyacinth stems were sourced from France, which now has a warmer climate compared to ours,” said Hans Oudshoorn, Director, Deleeuw Flowerbulb Group, a flower bulb exporter, who has provided space for the preparation of flower parade.
“So the flowers in the parade are half-Dutch, half-French,” Oudshoorn joked.
The flower parade, which began years ago as a marketing attempt by a Dutch farmer who decorated his truck with flowers and drove around to attract sellers, has become much bigger and iconic over the years. The costs involved are high, most of which are arranged by the parade committee, which comprises exporters, trade firms, tourists, hotel chains and local Governments, said Oudshoorn. There are hundreds of sponsors, too.
The parade preparation begin a year in advance. Each such decorated large truck costs about €20,000, said Oudshoorn. This year, about €3,50,000 was raised from many sponsors, including Universal Studios, and abflexcracht, a company that provides contract workers.
About 1 to 1.5 million people watch the parade, he said. Some 1,000 volunteers have been working 24 hours a day for three days from Wednesday to Friday to prepare the floats.
The parade generates revenue for the local Government for using services of the police and ambulance, which take up about a third of the total costs, Oudshoorn said.
The parade has a theme every year.
This year's theme is ‘Bon Appetit’. As a result, all the flowers are decorated as cakes, bananas, champagne and strawberries.
The flower parade is usually held in the last week of April, but this year it started on April 20 was spread over two days. The 2014 parade is slated for May 3. The parade location can be reached by tourists going to Keukenhof Park, the spring gardens that attract many Indian tourists, who remember it as the location of the theme song in the 1981 Amitabh Bachchan-Rekha starrer, Silsila .
Sixty per cent of flower bulbs in the world come from Holland and three-quarters of all global trade in bulbs passes through the Netherlands.
(The writer is in Amsterdam on the invitation of Amsterdam in Business, an arm of the local Government.)
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