The annual International Horti Fair held in Amsterdam RAI presents an important platform for cutting-edge technologies, services, and providers, and attracts visitors from around the world eager to showcase what they have to offer, to see the latest and future trends, and to meet people. One of the biggest global horticultural events, the Horti Fair evolved alongside, and partly through, the Aalsmeer auction. The original Flower Trade Show developed in Aalsmeer in 1963 from Bloemenlust and CAV (Aalsmeer's founding auctions); in the 1970s it moved to the current FloraHolland center in Aalsmeer, and focused on what was called ‘food crop horticulture and technique’ and ‘floriculture, floricultural technique, and trade.’ Combining after 1972 to make the NTV, which pushed forward Dutch horticulture's international agenda, the show quickly became the premier promotional event for Dutch horticulture and today attracts around 50,000 visitors from over 100 countries. Over the years, I’ve attended several of these week-long events, and 2008's was typically quirky.

Through Amsterdam RAI's vast show hall loitered thousands of people, mostly consisting of men wearing dress shirts and jeans. Booths offered demos and horticultural tackle, and tents hosted exhibits varying from conveyor belts circulating potted orchids beneath LED lights to floral arrangement competitions taking place before speakers booming House music. In these Horti Fair venues, the breadth of technical enterprise behind the production, presentation, and transportation of commercial flowers and plants is on display. Like other aspects of the industry, the event is firmly embedded in Dutch civic life. Horti Fair's 2010 chairman, Ewald van Vliet, was the former alderman of Westland, the first mayor of Lansingerland, and represents a sort of bobo or big linker, a power player and uniting figure in politics and horticulture. Individuals like this illustrate just one way horticulture connects with political, social, and commercial institutions in the Netherlands. In addition to these sorts of figures, annual events also do a lot to support the industry, ranging from the bloemencorsos, which emphasize aesthetic and folkloric facets of Dutch horticulture, to trade shows like the Horti Fair, which encompasses business, technical, and aesthetic aspects.