Keukenhof Tulips in March

Everyone always wants to know “when is the perfect time to see the tulips in the Netherlands?” It is a difficult question, but one I receive every year. The thing is, the tulip bloom is dependent on weather and soil moisture. Unless you live nearby it can be difficult to plan to visit at the perfect time. Plus, hotels book up for the entire seven-week period the Keukenhof garden is open. I always tell people that no matter when they visit Keukenhof they will get to see something beautiful. This year our spring is packed with visitors, so I’ll make several visits to the tulip fields.

Keukenhof is open late March to early May each year. If you’re looking for more information you can read posts from my 2016 visit, parade float viewing and bike ride or  my 2017 visit. The theme for 2018 is Love, so the park is full of adorable kissing Dutch couples and romantic flower displays.

My first visit this year took place just a week after Keukenhof gardens opened in late March. Although much of the gardens were not in full bloom you’ll find it picturesque and unlike anything you’ve seen outside of the Netherlands.

Here are an assortment of outdoor photos taken at Keukenhof in March of 2018. The daffodils were fully up and quite a few beds of the tulips were up and getting ready to bloom. It was rainy and not very sunny on the day of our visit so the tulips stayed tightly closed most of the day.

The indoor greenhouses are home to perfectly open flowers for the entire seven weeks. We started our visit here and could have spent an hour viewing all the different types. In the greenhouses everything is labeled, so it’s also fun to check out all the different names and colors of the flowers. Here are photos from the indoor flowers in March of 2018.

In addition to the flowers Keukenhof offers plenty of other distractions like a windmill, petting zoo, labyrinth, cafes, playgrounds and food carts galore. They also make an effort to make sure there are plenty of “selfie” spots around the garden.

I like to arrive at the gardens early, think opening time between 8am and 9am, so that we have a few hours to ourselves. This worked wonderfully. As we were leaving around noon the tour buses from Amsterdam were arriving and the park was growing more crowded.

We went directly from Keukenhof to Rent a Bike Van Dam in Noordwijk. I rented one bakfiets and one regular bike. You can make your bike reservation online. The staff at Rent a Bike Van Dam told me where the flower fields were blooming and we plotted a cycling route.

Since I had never taken the route through the dunes to the beach we opted to do that. It is a more hilly ride than if you went straight to the fields, but it’s so beautiful.

The two littles fell asleep on top of each other. . .it was pretty adorable, although we did check on them a million times because of their strange sleeping angles.

It was a great day seeing the flowers. We mostly stayed dry and I hopefully demonstrated that a great visit can be had at Keukenhof any week it is open. I’ll be back at the gardens a few more times this year and will have updates on the flowers. If you still want to check the status of the flower bloom there is a weekly tulip report that does a nice job of highlighting what is in bloom and where.

Whatever you end up doing I hope you have a wonderful trip to visit the flowers. Feel free to share your photos and posts with me in the comments.