Skip to content

Terrace B.C. receives friendship tulip garden from the Netherlands

Everyone is invited to tulip planting at Heritage Park Museum Oct. 16
48703terraceDSC_0068
Evelyn Pousette tends to tulips that have grown in her garden every year back to 1974. The Dutch government gave them and many others to Canada after the Second World War. Now Terrace is receiving more tulips for the 70th anniversary Dutch-Canadian Friendship Tulip Garden

By KELSEY WIEBE

The City of Terrace is the lucky recipient of a 70th Anniversary Dutch-Canadian Friendship Tulip Garden, one of 140 being distributed across Canada in celebration of the first gift of 100,000 Dutch tulip bulbs sent to Canadians in 1945 as a symbol of appreciation for the role Canadian soldiers played in the liberation of the Netherlands and the hospitality Canada provided to the Dutch Royal Family in Ottawa during the Second World War.

We feel very fortunate,” said Eric Lennert, the City of Terrace gardener, “to have received one of these gardens as we understand that the Canadian Garden Council, the organization behind the Friendship Tulip Garden program, received more than 400 applications.”

It will be located just outside of the museum’s front gate and will serve as a beautiful garden for museum visitors and for Terraceview Lodge and McConnell Estates residents to enjoy.

To ensure the garden’s longevity, Cathy Jackson of Spotted Horse Nursery has donated seaweed compost to serve as top dressing for the tulips. The Greater Terrace Beautification Society has donated plants and will help plan the garden to ensure that it is a perennial garden that can be enjoyed all summer.

Our garden, consisting of 700 red and white tulip bulbs, will be symbolically linked to a 70th Anniversary Dutch-Canadian Friendship Tulip Garden to be planted this fall in our nation’s capital and showcased during the 2016 Canadian Tulip Festival.

It will also be featured on the 2016 edition of Canada’s Garden Route, www.canadasgardenroute.ca.

Everyone is invited to the planting ceremony this Friday, October 16  at 1 p.m. at Heritage Park Museum.

Guests will be invited to plant some of the red 700 and white tulip bulbs.

And hear stories of the Dutch princess born in Ottawa during the war and the history of the enduring friendship bond between Canada and the Netherlands.