The Canadian Tulip Festival

The Canadian Tulip Festival claims to be the world's largest tulip festival, with attendance of over 500,000 visitors annually. This major cultural event is held annually in Ottawa and Gatineau, Canada, over the course of 18 days in May, concluding with the Victoria Day long weekend.

Although tulips are displayed throughout the city, the most extensive tulip beds are to found in Commissioners Park on the shores of Dow's Lake, and along the Rideau Canal with 300,000 tulips planted there alone. (source NCC brochure).

In 1945, the Dutch royal family sent 100,000 tulip bulbs to Ottawa in gratitude for Canadians having sheltered Princess Juliana and her daughters for the preceding three years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, in the Second World War.

The most noteworthy event during their time in Canada was the birth in 1943 of Princess Margriet to Princess Juliana at the Ottawa Civic Hospital. The maternity ward was declared to be officially a temporary part of international territory, so that she would be born in no country and would inherit only her Dutch citizenship from her mother. In 1946, Juliana sent another 20,500 bulbs requesting that a display be created for the hospital, and promised to send 10,000 more bulbs each year.





Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Tulip_Festival

See also: Florist Melbourne, Florist Sydney, Floral