In a large tennis hall in Sassenheim, hundreds of volunteers are putting flowers on the floats for the flower parade next Saturday. It’s a lot of work and blisters most of the time, but they carry on tirelessly. “In the evening you are turned off,” laughs one of the volunteers. “But that doesn’t matter, we will do anything for it.”
After two corona years, the flower parade will finally continue again this year. It is also an anniversary edition. The parade will be held for the 75th time and will arrive in Heemstede on Saturday evening and will continue to Haarlem where the cars can be admired for another day.
For a while it was exciting for the organization whether all volunteers would come back for the flower stitch after the corona years, but afterwards the concerns turned out to be unfounded. All stitching associations were back again and that was quite a relief for the organization. “Everyone is present again and everyone has a smile on their face. That’s what we do it for,” says Gerrit Rutgrink, vice-chairman and coordinator of the plug associations.
Province
This year, for the first time in history, a car from the province of North Holland is also driving. The car has a farmhouse at the front and behind it a rainbow, which stands for diversity. Flower borders will also be seen on the wagon, which have been laid out along fields for the bees throughout the province. Deputy Ilse Zaal came to have a look today and was deeply impressed. “It is incredibly beautiful, the design is great and it really symbolizes our province.”
The volunteers are still working late tonight, tomorrow the floats will be ready and they will leave the hall. “In daylight you see that the colors are often a bit more intense than here in artificial light, so that is always really nice to see,” says a volunteer from the Haarlem stitching association. “For the time being, we are well on schedule and it could just be that we will be ready on time and that it will not be night work this time.”
The flower parade can be seen live on Saturday evening at NH Nieuws and H105 from a quarter to eight from Heemstede.