Go Dutch: A pilgrimage to a museum in The Netherlands is a must for tulip fans The heartland of the tulip lies in Central Asia, but for most people, whether they are gardeners or not, the flower is a Dutch thing. Tulips and windmills. It must be Holland. The bulb fields there are known the world over and the area devoted to bulb growing is increasing all the time. In 1960, 10,000 hectares were given over to tulips. Fifty years on, the area has more than doubled. But during that same time, the number of individual bulb growers has dropped from 13,000 to 2,700. The average holding has grown from one hectare to eight. Historically, The Netherlands has been a place of small holdings, with particular growers specialising in particular flowers: Maarten Kamp, living alone in a single room alongside his bulb shed, growing huge crops of the single early tulip 'Brilliant Star'; Bernard Rijnveld of Hillegom who raised many of the best Kaufmanniana hybrids (Rijnveld was a Dutch Jew, sheltered through the terrible years of occupation in the Second World War by the monks of a Lisse monastery); Gerard Leembruggen of Lisse, who introduced the first double early tulip, the famous 'Murillo', sweet-smelling, its white petals prettily flushed with pink; Arie Overdevest of Wassenaar, one of several growers who at the end of the Second World War concentrated on introducing strong new Darwin hybrids. Such diversity among the growers meant that each, if he wanted to, could specialise, could create niche markets for a wide range of different flowers. Now, despite the fact that thousands of tulips are registered in the Dutch Bulb Growers' (KAVB) Classified List, only about a hundred are grown on a commercial scale. A huge shift has taken place, driven by the fact that more tulips are now grown for the cut-flower market than for sale as bulbs to gardeners. The highest prices are paid for the earliest flowers, so many growers now concentrate on tulips that can be pushed into bloom by Christmas. The qualities these growers look for - flowers that are easy to force, that are tough enough to travel long distances - are not the qualities that have drawn both artists and gardeners to the flower over the past 450 years. I'm thinking of tulips such as 'General Ney', bred by Voorhelm & Schneevoogt who had bulb fields in Haarlem from 1768 until 1837. It isn't a tulip you can buy, but came to me, a single bulb, from a friend who is even madder about tulips than I am. The flower, opening above neat, narrow foliage, was a fabulous and complex purplish-mahogany, a strange and captivating colour, gone altogether now from modern tulips. I was deeply in love with it and desperately hoped to be able to build up a stock. Unfortunately, the General perished in the tulip's everlasting battle against damp, slugs and lack of sun. In Britain, tulips are growing at the very western edge of their preferred habitat. We have to work hard to persuade them they want to stay. Fortunately, you can still pay homage to 'General Ney' by way of a pilgrimage to the Hortus-Bulborum at Limmen in The Netherlands. The Hortus is a living museum of old flowers, nowhere near as well-known as the famous Keukenhof, but packed with gorgeous things, most of which you will never see anywhere else. It was set up in the late 1920s by Pieter Boschman, the local schoolmaster, who even then grieved over the number of old flowers that were being thrown on the dungheap, no longer grown in the bulbfields round his village. Boschman started collecting these old cultivars and, in a spare patch of land by the school, planted them out. Most of his flowers were tulips, old beauties such as van der Vinne's violet-flowered 'Godet Parfait', Krelage's 'Mahogany' of 1905, the parrot tulip 'Café Brun' of 1840, superb old Rembrandts such as the purple and white 'Beauty of Bath' from 1906. Nobody paid him to do this. Nobody paid the volunteers who helped him lift the precious survivors in late spring and replant them the following autumn. But over the years the collection grew. Now it contains more than 4,000 different bulbs, half of them tulips. If you want to know what kind of tulip the French king Louis XIV was ogling at Versailles, the Hortus-Bulborum will show you. If you want a tantalising demonstration of all the variety and subtlety that we, as gardeners, can no longer easily find among tulips, the Hortus-Bulborum will show you that, too. Most of all, though, a collection such as this teaches you how to look. Tulips now are described in a brutish shorthand: red, yellow, white, purple. But how can 'red' possibly explain the complexities that are going on in a flower such as the Triumph tulip 'Couleur Cardinal'? In 1911, Walter Wright, founder and editor of Popular Gardening, described it "shining with the dusky splendour of old wine" when it was planted either side of the Broad Walk at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Even a cardinal might blush at the sensuous quality of the petals, gleaming, like expensive satin, with a plum-coloured bloom laid over the richest imaginable red. Fortunately, this wonderful tulip is still available (this summer, try ordering from broadleighbulbs.co.uk or jacquesamand.com). How can 'white' possibly call to mind the elegant demeanour of the lily-flowered tulip 'White Triumphator'? Flowering in late April, it is one of the most perfectly poised of tulips. Think of the sweeping lines of a vase or urn, curving in at the waist, flipping out at the top, graceful, stylish, perfectly balanced, the essence of chic (and available from avonbulbs.co.uk or bridgemere.co.uk). 'White Triumphator' was a symbol of hope, introduced by the famous Dutch firm of van Tubergen in the dark year of 1942. Rows of red and white tulips, with a band of blue hyacinths alongside the white, were planted en masse by Dutch growers in the bulb fields during the Second World War. You have only to look at the Dutch national flag to understand why. The tulip is a powerful flower and it knows it. Beauty, grace, charm, refinement, distinction, it has the lot. But if you can't fit in a visit to the Hortus-Bulborum itself next month, come and celebrate the flower at The Royal Horticultural Society's Tulip Day. This will be held on 11 April at Lawrence Hall, Greycoat Street, London SW1P 2QD. In the hall itself will be special displays of tulips. In the Hall's Lecture Theatre there's a programme of talks (scheduled between 10am-4pm) by Cees Kroone of the Hortus-Bulborum, James Akers of the magnificent Wakefield and North of England Tulip Society, Richard Wilford from Kew (he'll be talking about species tulips), Lady Skelmersdale, owner of Broadleigh Gardens nursery. Tickets (£15) are available from 0845 6121253 and there's more information at rhs.org.uk/whatson/events/london shows. The Hortus-Bulborum Foundation is at Zuidkerkenlaan 23A, Limmen, The Netherlands, hortus-bulborum.nl