The link you provide is to a very large event, and the central canal neighborhood where these gardens are is the wealthiest in the city. There are lots of people from all over who come to Amsterdam for this, and many of the gardens belong to movie stars and other famous people.

The Jordaan, where we live, has a reputation as a yuppie neighborhood, but it’s not quite so high class as the main canal district. The gardens in our neighborhood are called ‘hofjes’, and some are open to the public all the time. There are special tourist guides that have suggested tours. Many of them are private, but are open during our own neighborhood Open Garden days. It’s much more of a neighborhood affair, and most people attending are Dutch speakers. There’s very little promotion of the event, usually only a few posters placed around the neighborhood. Many of these gardens show what you can do in a very small space, in limited circumstances rather than the grand canal gardens.

Anyway, they haven’t announced a day this year, and all I could find on the Internet about it was this automatically-translated-from-Dutch page:

http://tinyurl.com/7jdfzw

When we visit gardens, this is the event we usually go on. It’s been a few years since we’ve done it though.

Easygardener, we haven’t done open gardens in several years. We live in the Jordaan, and our neighboorhood has their own day. When we do visit gardens it’s usually our local ones.

It would be nice to see you when you come.

Honestly, I struggle to get good gardening tools. I mostly end up at chain garden centers or hardware stores, buying stuff from China.

Not too far from Schiphol, in Hoofddorp, is this place:

http://www.meijdebie.nl/

They sell mostly power tools, but they do have a small selection of hand tools. They can get lots of stuff by special order (I got my weed burner this way: http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=21 ). There’s no way to take public transportation there, only a car or taxi, and I can’t honestly say I think it would be worth that much trouble.

Another place that sells very nice copper tools, and is very far away from Amsterdam is this place:

http://www.kopersporen.nl (sorry, only in Dutch!)

There is a place in the UK that sells some of the same tools here (so you can read about them in English):

http://www.implementations.co.uk/

If you want to order some of these tools in advance and have them sent to me, I’d be glad to give them to you when you’re here. I think the store is too far away to visit.

Beyond this, there are a few garden centers or large chain hardware stores. For example Gamma or Praxis. These too mostly require a car or taxi ride. If you want to know more about where these are near Schiphol or Amsterdam, let me know and I’ll email you a list.