Event details

The gardens and courtyards at Hampton Court Palace will be awash with colour this Spring,
with visitors of all ages invited to experience tens of thousands of dazzling tulips, as the palace bursts into colour with over 100,000 bulbs for the annual Tulip Festival. Visitors are invited to enjoy one of the UK's largest displays of planted tulips
from 8 - 29 April, as the bright blooms burst from every corner of the formal gardens and historic cobbled courtyards.
Hampton Court Palace has a long association with the elegant tulip, as former resident Queen Mary II was a keen horticulturist and collected exotic plants to feature in the gardens at the palace. The prized tulip was first introduced to the British Isles in the 1630s, but visitors will be able to admire a number of historic varieties of tulip in the Lower Orangery Garden stretching back to the 1500s thanks to with a collaboration with Hortus Bulborum, in the Netherlands.
New for this year, thousands of tulips will spill from a Victorian horse cart in the heart of the
palace courtyards, giving the appearance of a Dutch flower seller's cart in this dramatic
Tudor space. Visitors can expect to be delighted by dazzling displays of tulips across the
gardens, including 'floating' bowls in the Great Fountain and a free style of planting in the
kitchen gardens to show off a huge variety of tulip types. Over 10,000 bright bulbs will make
for the perfect photo opportunity in Fountain Court, at the heart of Queen Mary II's baroque
palace.
For those wanting to discover more, expert Palace Hosts will also be delivering daily Tulip
Talks, sharing the history of the most coveted flower of the 18th century and the Queen who
introduced them to Hampton Court.