Spring was in the air and I was restless. All around me the world was bursting out in colour. I thought a visit to Holland would be appropriate because Holland is famous for its flowers and the flower parade or Bloemencorso. A feast for the eyes and nose ... Twenty huge floats and 30 lavishly decorated cars follow a route from Noordwijk, a town west of Netherlands, to Haarlem, outside Amsterdam. Visitors throng to catch a glimpse of this colourful flower spectacle.
Local organisations put on their thinking caps months before the parade, to come up with a great design, how to build and decorate it. The choice of flowers has also to be decided. Dahlias are a common choice as they are grown in large community gardens.
I had heard so much about these floats and even read up about them, but nothing prepared me for the sight that met my eyes. I was blown away by the sheer genius of it all. Live music and costumed performance accompanies the floats
Get set
Three days before the parade, there is frenzied activity as the floats will be “pierced”. Ha! Got you there, didn’t I? Pierced means to cover and decorate with bulb flowers. Hundreds of volunteers gather and get down to work piercing or pinning hyacinths, tulips, daffodils, dahlias and more to the floats.
I am always interested in finding out the hows and whys of any celebration. So, I dropped in to the local library and did some research. I found that this began in the end of the 1940s, just after World War II. After the strife and terror of the war, there was a great need to lighten up and have a laugh. So, people began to plan a parade...a party so to speak, just so that people could come out and gather and have a good time. It began with just a procession of a couple of people with flower garlands, decorated trucks and handcarts, with the local band giving it a musical tilt.
At the first flower parade in 1947, it was one Willem Warmenhoven, an amaryllis grower who created the first float in the shape of a whale. On a small, rickety truck was built the shape of a whale and concealed with hyacinths.
The theme for the 2018 Bloemencorso or flower parade is culture.
