Peter Van de Wetering, for 54 years the unrivaled tulip impresario of Park Avenue, grew up in a lush world. As a child raised in The Hague, his earliest memories were of the greenhouses where his father produced seeds for vegetable growers and profusions of flowers — freesias, anemones and of course tulips, a Dutch obsession that survived the ruinous frenzy of tulipmania that swept Holland in the 17th century.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/realestate/a-gardener-whose-field-is-park-avenue.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0