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4 beautiful butterfly parks in the Netherlands

4 beautiful butterfly parks in the Netherlands

With the summer days finally here in the Netherlands, what better a way to spend the day than being surrounded by beautiful butterflies! But where can you find these butterflies? At a butterfly park of course! Let’s venture to four of these exotic locations…

1. Passiflorahoeve - Harskamp

Passiflorahoeve doesn’t just have one butterfly garden, oh no… It has five! That’s right, five different butterfly gardens and on top of that, it even has a butterfly museum! Visiting this establishment will certainly not leave you disappointed, that’s for sure. 

There’s a European butterfly garden, a European butterfly nursery, a tropical butterfly garden and nursery, and a butterfly and insect outdoor garden. In these gardens, more than 90 different kinds of day and night butterflies flutter about, snacking on the nectar of the plants and fruits laid out for them.

2. Vlindertuin Vlindorado- Waarland

Vlindertuin Vlindorado is one of the biggest butterfly gardens in Europe (not the biggest, we’ll come back to this later). Due to the tropical temperatures and exotic flora and fauna surrounding you on your visit, it’ll feel like you escaped to the tropics. Each week, hundreds of butterfly pupae arrive at Vlindorado - around 500 to 800 in fact! These come from Costa Rica, The Philippines and Malaysia. Vlindorado also cultivates some tropical butterflies itself.

3. Orchideeën Hoeve - Luttlegeest

The Vlinder Vallei (Butterfly Valley) at Orchideeën Hoeve is the biggest butterfly garden in the whole of Europe! That’s right, here in the little country that is the Netherlands. In this garden you’ll be able to see more than 2.000 butterflies flapping their wings.

The butterfly park has its own nursery where it cultivates a few tropical butterflies; however, it also imports more than 55 kinds of tropical butterflies from Costa Rica and the Philippines weekly. These are sent to the Orchideeën Hoeve by post in their pupae form. It only takes a couple of days (up to 10) in the hatchery before the cocoons burst open and the butterflies take their first flight.

Here, the butterfly garden is not only home to butterflies, but you’ll also be able to see turtles, an iguana, parakeets and other tropical birds and animals during your visit. 

4. Vlinders aan de Vliet - Leidschendam

There are hundreds of beautiful butterflies to admire at Vlinders aan de Vliet in Leidschendam. They cultivate 15 percent themselves and 85 percent is purchased in pupae form from nurseries in tropical countries. The garden is open from the end of February until October 31. After this, the weather becomes too dark and cold in the greenhouse for the butterflies.

The park is actually a hobby that just got out of hand and transformed into a jungle / butterfly garden, with hundreds of butterflies, birds, water animals - like turtles and fish, and unusual plants and flowers.

Which butterfly park will you be visiting?

We could go on and on about the beautiful butterfly parks in the Netherlands, but then we’d be here all day! In any case, we have only mentioned four, but there are a few more in the country. Don’t fancy visiting a park full of these mesmerising flying insects? You could take a trip to a botanical garden instead and admire the plants…

So, which butterfly park will you be visiting? Let us know in the comments below!

Mina Solanki

Author

Mina Solanki

Completed her Master's degree at the University of Groningen and worked as a translator before joining IamExpat. She loves to read and has a particular interest in Greek mythology. In...

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BigMat 17:54 | 16 July 2019

Good article, thanks! my family oughta love them!