Emma Baepler, center, traveled to Holland for a study abroad trip with Mizzou's College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. Students visited iconic tulip fields and windmills.
April 10, 2025
Contact: Sara Diedrich, 573-882-6217, diedrichs@missouri.edu
Photos courtesy of Emma Baepler
For Emma Baepler, a spring break trip to Holland wasn’t just a study abroad opportunity to visit the world’s largest exporter of cut flowers — it was a journey that affirmed her passion for all things blooming and solidified her career aspirations.
A sophomore from Jamestown, Missouri, Baepler is studying agriculture education at the University of Missouri with minors in plant science and human and family development. She also works part time as a floral designer at Tiger Garden — a floral business on campus created to foster hands-on learning opportunities for students interested in the floral industry. Last year, Baepler captured the top prize at the national student competition of the American Institute of Floral Designers, and she’s currently preparing to compete again this summer in Palm Springs, California.
So, when the opportunity arose to join 11 fellow students from Mizzou’s College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources on a university-sponsored spring break program in Holland, it felt like a perfect fit.
“It’s difficult to describe how beautiful it is there,” she said. “I’ve always thought flowers were beautiful. My mom puts together these incredible flower boxes every year. Planting with her and learning how things grow is probably where it all began for me.”
Flower power
One of the highlights: a visit to the Aalsmeer Flower Auction — a sprawling marketplace the size of about 200 football fields that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the international flower trade. On a typical weekday, roughly 43 million flowers and five million plants are bought and sold there.
“It's a huge warehouse you can see across, with different stations along the way,” Baepler said. “We walked on a catwalk that spanned the warehouse above the floor.”
Baepler was especially captivated by the Boerma Institute, an internationally renowned floral design school that hosted the students during their visit. While there, the institute happened to be putting on an international master florist program, giving the students an opportunity to observe advanced floral projects up close and talk with world-class designers. They also got hands-on experience creating European spiral bouquets — a technique Baepler was excited to practice.
“It was incredible to see how professionals make these projects on a much larger scale,” she said, noting the low cost of cut flowers in the Netherlands. “Their $50 bouquet would easily cost $200 in the U.S. because they don’t have the shipping costs. It made me jealous as a florist.”
Throughout the week-long visit, the students also explored a variety of flower fields, botanical gardens and greenhouses. While Holland’s iconic tulip fields — known for their sweeping displays of late-blooming varieties — weren’t yet in full bloom, the group did get to enjoy early-blooming tulips nestled in smaller flower beds at Keukenhof. There, they also toured greenhouses showcasing specialty tulip varieties, including doubles, parrot tulips and other delicate varieties.
The students were also treated to golden fields of flowering daffodils that stretched to the horizon — a sight that Baepler found incredibly peaceful.
“The flower farmer in me started to calculate how many flowers there were,” she said. “The best I could come up with was thousands.”
The trip also included visits to a fishing village, a castle, a dairy farm and working windmills. Cultural highlights included visits to the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum.
Planting a seed
For Baepler, the experience was more than visually stunning, it was also motivating. A rising floral designer and aspiring educator, she hopes to teach agriculture courses to middle or high school students one day.
“It would be really amazing to bring students to the Netherlands once I'm an ag teacher,” she said. “After the U.S., it's the world's biggest exporter of agricultural produce. It would be interesting to see how produce is grown on a mass scale in such a small country — and I would love to see the tulips in bloom.”
