This Saturday, I’m really looking forward to helping the North Bay Heritage Gardeners celebrate the blooming of their 70th Anniversary Dutch-Canadian Friendship Tulip Garden at the waterfront in North Bay. Last fall, The North Bay Heritage Gardeners were one of more than 400 applicants selected by the Canadian Garden Council to participate in the program.
Local veterans, school children and the public are being invited to attend a brief blooming ceremony, officiated by my very good friend, Hariett Madigan. The ceremony will recount the history of the enduring friendship between Canada and the Netherlands that was forever solidified in the spring of 1946, when 100,000 tulips bloomed in Ottawa.
Planted the previous fall, the Dutch tulip bulbs were sent to Canadians 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 World War II.
Now a gift-in-perpetuity, Canada continues to receive 20,000 tulip bulbs every fall; the blooms of which are enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of people every spring during the Canadian Tulip Festival.
My congratulations go out to all of the hard-working volunteers with the North Bay Heritage Gardeners for their commitment to making this a reality and continually beautifying our waterfront.
