The flowers ran out pretty quickly on Easter Monday at the Tulpenpluk, Belgium’s traditional tulip-harvesting festival, as a whopping 18,000 pickers gathered in Antwerp’s Berendrecht-Zandvliet-Lillo district.
They harvested a total of 170,000 tulips, whose bulbs had been planted last autumn.
Visitors were allowed to take home up to ten tulips each for free, so due to the large turnout, the tulips were finished earlier than expected, organisers said on Monday evening.
This was the seventh edition of the traditional tulip-harvesting festival, which also offered participants classes in flower arranging. The event was a collaborative effort involving volunteers, local associations, the City of Antwerp, and the port.
The first tulip bulbs arrived in Western Europe from Turkey via the port of Antwerp nearly five hundred years ago. Until the mid-20th century, tulip cultivation was an important activity in the Antwerp polders.
Since 2012, the district of Berendrecht-Zandvliet-Lillo has been spotlighting the tulip once again.
The Port of Antwerp-Bruges operated special trains on Monday for the event, transporting visitors from Antwerp Central via freight tracks to the port area around Berendrecht and back.
Thousands of other participants arrived by bus, bicycle, car, or on foot.
The event is held every two years so the next Tulpenpluk in Berendrecht will not take place until 2027.
