Experiencing the Amsterdam Open Garden Days

Each year in summer, for three days, many of the private and most beautiful canal gardens in Amsterdam are opened to the public. Known as the Open Garden Days (Open Tuinen Dagen in Dutch), this event is perfect for anyone who’s ever been curious about what lies behind the many gorgeous canal houses in the canal belt (Grachtengordel), which is the UNESCO Listed ring of canals around the city centre that date back to the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century. This year (2025), I finally managed to experience the event for myself, so now I can report back to you what it’s like to snoop around in some of the prettiest gardens in the city!

About the Amsterdam Open Garden Days

The Open Garden Days take place each year around the middle of June, over a weekend which includes Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The event is organised in order to draw attention to the city’s green heritage or “green lungs” found within the ring of canals. Each year there is a different theme, and usually different gardens may take part, so you might not always get to see the same gardens even if you attend multiple years. For 2025, the theme was art in the canal house garden, so the gardens that were open all featured different forms of art on display among the plantings.

How it works

If you want to attend the Open Garden Days, you do need to pay for a ticket, which can be bought online through the Museum van Loon website (although they won’t show up until around May) or on-site at a couple of the garden sites during the open weekend. I purchased my ticket online and then started my visit at the Museum van Loon so I could pick up my Passepartout, which you then need to show upon entry to any of the gardens you visit. At each address there were people sitting out the front who would ‘stamp’ the back of your Passepartout.

This is because you can only enter each garden once (aside from the garden at the Museum van Loon) and it was also kind of cool to collect the different stamps as well. I wasn’t sure how many gardens would be open, so I was surprised to find out there were 26 to visit, far more than can really be seen in one day. If I lived in Amsterdam proper then I might have visited for all three days and made sure to see every garden, but as I only wanted to head into the city for one day, these are the gardens I managed to see.

The Amsterdam Open Gardens I visited!

Garden 1 – Museum van Loon

I decided to start at Museum van Loon so I could pick up my Passepartout and then check out the garden. This museum is open year-round, so you can visit the garden at any time but I hadn’t actually been here before. The museum is a former mansion from the 17th-century, with rooms designed to display how the wealthy family who resided here lived. I didn’t go into the main museum on this visit as I wanted to make sure I had time to see plenty of the gardens but I will definitely be back, not least because I’ve heard there are some resident cats who often hang around!

The garden at Museum van Loon stretches from the back of the original residence to what used to be a coach house, although it’s a very grand coach house, adorned with classical sculptures. There’s also a sundial in the middle of a formal rose garden and during the Open Garden Days you could have tea, coffee and sweet treats in the garden.

Garden 2 – Foam Fotografiemuseum

Across the canal from Museum van Loon was another museum that opened its garden for the weekend: the Foam Photography Museum. I’m not sure if you can usually go into the garden when you visit this museum or not, but there were some extra displays of photography within the garden for the weekend, along with seating and another spot where you could order drinks and snacks then sit outside to enjoy them.

Garden 3

The third garden I visited was a huge private garden, where there were actually live music performances for visitors to enjoy. There were plenty of places for visitors to sit although the main grassy area was fenced off. During my visit there was a lady playing the piano and a man playing the oboe, which was quite beautiful. Although there was also a rather indignant blackbird shouting louder than the music at one point which I thought was quite funny!

Garden 4

Garden four was another private garden, a very long one with a charming studio at the back and even a chicken coop! I also enjoyed the little pond in the middle and all the sculptures, but as you can see in the photo below, there were a lot of people there. There was also a massive beech tree that apparently dates back to 1875!

Garden 5

Another private garden, this one was much smaller than the others but still charming, with lots of little nooks to sit and enjoy the plants. I also liked how there were two different levels of the house where you could enter the garden, and I loved the little dog sculpture on the stairs!

Garden 6

I think this garden was possibly my favourite of the day, because it was such an idyllic little spot hidden away from the hustle of the city. Both sides of the garden walls were covered in greenery and the kitchen doors opened out to a lovely sitting area with beautiful lilies and other flowers (the photo in the “About the Amsterdam Open Garden Days” was also taken here). There was also an area that led to a mirror at the back of the garden, but it was too busy for me to get any good photos. This would be a wonderful garden to sit outside in the sun and read or have a coffee while listening to the birds.

Garden 7

My second-favourite garden was this one, mainly because it was almost like a jungle with the plants and stylings, plus that massive bathtub with doors that opened directly into the garden! At the end of the narrow garden was another studio building with beautiful scarves and things that you could buy, plus there was even a staircase at the main building back doors that led up to a little balcony where you could sit and look out over the garden.

Garden 8 – Fosbury & Sons

Garden eight is the outdoor area of Fosbury & Sons, a co-working/membership space in Amsterdam that has a very large courtyard/garden area where you can sit outside to work or enjoy a meal from the on-site café. Unfortunately, there was work being done on the surrounding buildings so the scaffolding detracted from the garden’s prettiness a bit, but I did like the hammerhead shark sculpture made from fish-hooks!

Garden 9 – De Bary

The final garden I visited was the massive garden behind De Bary, another co-working/membership space. The garden area here actually stretches behind six different buildings, and is filled with different nooks among the trimmed hedges, including one area that looked like it even had beehives! Once again, it was amazing to find such a serene space in the middle of Amsterdam and this garden area was so big that it didn’t feel as busy as most of the others had.

Bonus Garden – H’ART Museum!

While I didn’t visit this garden on the Open Garden Days weekend, I did notice that it was on the program and since I had visited the museum a few weeks earlier, I’m including a couple of photos as well so you can see. The garden section of H’ART Museum is actually free to enter, so you could visit it at any time, and relax on one of the chairs among the greenery. Make sure you also go through the building to the other side to check out some cool sculptures!

Final Thoughts

I do definitely think that if you want to really enjoy the Open Garden Days then you should try to set aside three days to see all the gardens that are open. The way they were grouped on the map meant you could easily see a small group of gardens each day without wearing yourself out too much. And since tickets cost €25, it works out to cost less than a euro for each garden if you go to them all, bargain!

The weekend I went was also very hot, so you would definitely need breaks to rest and keep hydrated. But it’s a gorgeous way to spend a summer weekend, especially as you get to wander among pretty streets and canals that you might not have seen otherwise. However, don’t think that you’re going to have all these idyllic gardens all to yourself, as it is also a very popular event. Most of the time, I was inching along within the gardens, trying not to bump into other people or the plants, and it’s hard to get any photos without other people in them. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go, but do manage your expectations as to what it will be like!

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Have you visited any of the open gardens during the Amsterdam Open Garden Days? Tell me about it in the comments or pin one of these if you’re planning to visit them in the future!