For many of his fellow countrymen, the words of Dutch poet Hendrik Marsman in his poem Denkend aan Holland (Thinking of Holland) best describe their feelings about the Netherlands.

Denkend aan Holland
zie ik breede rivieren
traag door oneindig
laagland gaan,
rijen ondenkbaar
ijle populieren
als hooge pluimen
aan den einder staan

(Thinking of Holland
I see broad rivers
slowly moving
through infinite lowlands,
rows of unthinkably
thin poplars
as tall plumes
along the horizon)

For the rest of the world, Holland is primarily the country of windmills, wooden shoes and most of all, tulips.

As impressive as the sheer endless fields of tulips in the Dutch polder landscape look, the statistics about Dutch share in the flower industry worldwide boggle the mind.

According to data from the Flower Council of Holland, export of flower bulbs from the Netherlands makes up 80 per cent of worldwide export and total trade of bulbs and related articles has an estimated value of about six billion euro. About 40 per cent of flower varieties grown around the world are Dutch, as are 65 per cent of the 1800 new flower varieties that enter the European market annually.

Tulips were introduced to the Netherlands as a rare and exotic flower in the late 16th century by a botanist from the University of Leiden, Carolus Clusius. The story goes that he received the bulbs from Ogier de Busbecq, at the time ambassador to Constantinople. Clusius grew the tulips as part of his research into medicinal plants and was said to have refused to sell or give away his tulips. Some of his neighbours were said to have broken into his garden, stolen some of the bulbs and started what is now the nation’s tulip trade.

Soon after its introduction, the bulbs led to the “tulipomania”. In the period around 1637/38 when the country was suffering from an epidemic of bubonic plague and setbacks in the Thirty Years War, tulip bulbs were considered so rare and exotic that they were exchanged for land, valuable livestock and houses. The term tulipomania has come to be a metaphor for large economic bubbles.

Today, in Bulgaria, most tulips on the market are imported, mostly from the Netherlands, though also from Italy and Hungary. Import is focussed on two periods a year, spring and autumn, depending on when specific varieties need to be planted. A large number of companies in Bulgaria import tulips, often alongside greenhouses and agricultural machinery.

In Bulgaria, clients for the tulip bulbs are mostly end-customers. Despite its close geographical proximity to the flower’s origin, tulip growing in Bulgaria remains somewhat of an exotic activity.