Flowers, bikes and children in shorts: an evening in Park Rusthoff

LocalDutchWays Blog — Sassenheim, Bollenstreek — April 2026

The park is full. Families with bikes, volunteers with armfuls of flowers, children who cannot stand still. The queue moves, but not fast enough for a six-year-old who has decided, firmly, that they are going to make the most beautiful bike here tonight.

Every year, on the Friday evening before the Annual Flower Parade, Park Rusthoff in Sassenheim opens its gates for one of the most quietly wonderful traditions in the bulb region. Children bring their bikes, scooters and go-karts to Pavilion ’t Sassennest, and volunteers hand out flowers and floral foam. From 18:30 until 20:00, the park becomes a workshop, a competition and a party all at once.

The flowers

The choice of flowers is generous and genuinely beautiful. Rows of buckets, each one a different colour, a different shape. Tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, and varieties that are harder to name but impossible to ignore.

Close your eyes for a moment and it is even better. The scent in the park that evening is layered and complex, dozens of varieties mixing in the warm air. You cannot always tell which flower you are smelling. But there is one thing that is unmistakable: it smells like spring.

The children (and the parents)

Despite it being early evening, the temperature is still warm enough for shorts. The children do not seem to notice the hour at all. They are focused. Strategic, even. Choosing colours, tucking stems into foam, stepping back to assess, adjusting.

The parents are helping, of course. Holding the bike steady, passing the flowers, suggesting where the next hyacinth might go. Quietly competitive? Perhaps just a little. Nobody admits it.

What strikes you, standing in the middle of it all, is how local this feels. Not a ticketed event, not a tourist attraction. Just a village tradition, passed on from one generation to the next, held together by volunteers and the simple pleasure of making something beautiful with flowers.

The morning after

The next morning, the children’s parade sets off from the town centre at 11:00, bikes now fully decorated, a brass band leading the way. The dedicated spectators arrive early, staking out the best spots along the route. And mixed in among them, a few tourists who were not expecting this at all: a procession of small children on flower-covered bikes, winding through the village streets with a band playing ahead of them.

The ones who go quiet

Not everyone reacts the same way. Watch carefully and you will notice them: grandparents, often standing slightly apart from the crowd, going a little quiet as the parade passes. They reach for their phone. Take a photo, discreetly. Not for Instagram. For the family group chat, for the story that ends with: next year, you are all coming with us.

A personal note

We live in Sassenheim, and the Flower Parade passes through the street next to our house. This year, we decorated our own boys’ bikes in the park that Friday evening. Standing there with our three sons, surrounded by flowers and families and the smell of spring, it was one of those evenings that does not need a filter.

This is why we built LocalDutchWays. Not to sell an experience, but to share one. The bulb region in spring is not just Keukenhof and tulip fields. It is evenings like this one.

Practical information

The bike decorating evening takes place on the Friday before the Annual Flower Parade, from 18:30 to 20:00 at Pavilion ’t Sassennest in Park Rusthoff, Sassenheim. Free and open to all children. The children’s parade follows on Saturday morning at 11:00 from the town centre. Park Rusthoff is a short walk from Sassenheim station.

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