Someting
Transcript
Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: And the best compliment we can get
Speaker:is when people say, you know, really felt like a little slice of home.
Speaker:It looked kind of like the Netherlands here, the way you have the garden set
Speaker:up and the canals and the windmill.
Speaker:And I think they appreciate, as do we, that we're not, again,
Speaker:we're not trying to do it as a kitche thing, as a tourist trap.
Speaker:We want to give ' em a little bit broader picture of the Netherlands
Speaker:as well as Holland, Michigan.
Cliff Duvernois:Hello everyone and welcome back to Ordinary
Cliff Duvernois:People, Extraordinary Things.
Cliff Duvernois:I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois.
Cliff Duvernois:Today we are continuing our exploration of the city of Holland.
Cliff Duvernois:And I am speaking with the Windmill Island Gardens Development
Cliff Duvernois:Manager for the City of Holland.
Cliff Duvernois:Cuz it's hard not to think about Holland without thinking
Cliff Duvernois:about the Windmill Garden.
Cliff Duvernois:So today's guest, Matt Helmus, is gonna share with us a brief history
Cliff Duvernois:of the place and, Matt, how are you?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: I'm doing great, Cliff.
Cliff Duvernois:It's a great day.
Cliff Duvernois:thanks for taking time to talk with us today.
Cliff Duvernois:Tell us a little bit about where you're from and where you.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: I'm a native boy here from West Michigan.
Cliff Duvernois:I grew up, here in Grand Rapids in Jenison, just down
Cliff Duvernois:the road in Ottawa County.
Cliff Duvernois:So not too far from Holland.
Cliff Duvernois:Had never really ventured here a whole lot, especially during tulip time.
Cliff Duvernois:I had one of those dads who said, we'll take, we'll go there 50 weeks
Cliff Duvernois:out of the year, but those two weeks of Tulip Time, we're not gonna visit.
Cliff Duvernois:So close enough to know what's going on, but far enough to not go all the time.
Cliff Duvernois:Where did you go to college?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: I went up to the center of the
Cliff Duvernois:state, up to Alma College and got my undergrad there in history.
Cliff Duvernois:And then came back to West Michigan for a master's at Grand
Cliff Duvernois:Valley in Public Administration.
Cliff Duvernois:So how did you make the leap from a degree in
Cliff Duvernois:history to working for the city?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: Well, it was one of those openings I saw.
Cliff Duvernois:I had just finished up a master's degree, started looking around
Cliff Duvernois:for jobs and saw this opening at Wind Island Gardens in Holland.
Cliff Duvernois:And I grew up as a, a Dutch kid locally.
Cliff Duvernois:A lot of my family way back had come from the Netherlands.
Cliff Duvernois:I love history.
Cliff Duvernois:Just finished degree in Public Administration, so non-profit
Cliff Duvernois:or MUN municipal work.
Cliff Duvernois:And when I saw this opening, my wife kinda looked at me and said
Cliff Duvernois:it's like you couldn't have written a better job description for me.
Cliff Duvernois:The Dutch stuff, the history stuff, the public administration thing.
Cliff Duvernois:So it was just an absolute godsend of a job.
Cliff Duvernois:that's really interesting.
Cliff Duvernois:What made you think that you were, because it's like quite a leap from
Cliff Duvernois:having a degree in history to all of a sudden now having to maintain one
Cliff Duvernois:of the key central points that people think of when they think about Holland.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: It is, it's really the
Cliff Duvernois:focal point of Holland.
Cliff Duvernois:It was in the city logo for years and still in there.
Cliff Duvernois:People think about the windmill.
Cliff Duvernois:They come to Holland and they say, where's your Dutch stuff?
Cliff Duvernois:And we point 'em to, our windmill, we point 'em to
Cliff Duvernois:wooden shoes, things like that.
Cliff Duvernois:Tulip Festival.
Cliff Duvernois:So it really, I'd gotten enough management experience and they were really looking to
Cliff Duvernois:tighten up the administration down there.
Cliff Duvernois:We'll talk a little bit about, I'm sure.
Cliff Duvernois:Financially, it wasn't in the best of straits.
Cliff Duvernois:Dutch people are known for being, pretty good, pretty frugal, good with money.
Cliff Duvernois:So we've really tightened things up over the years.
Cliff Duvernois:So with some of the experience I've had there, really paid off at the island.
Cliff Duvernois:What I'd like to do is take a step back in
Cliff Duvernois:time to how the Windmill Island Gardens, even came into, existence.
Cliff Duvernois:And from what I was researching online, this was something that was started back
Cliff Duvernois:in the fifties or sixties timeframe.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: Yeah.
Cliff Duvernois:Back in the forties, fifties, folks around town, some of the city fathers
Cliff Duvernois:were banding about the idea of, how do we show off the Dutch heritage?
Cliff Duvernois:At that time, the city had been around for about a hundred years,
Cliff Duvernois:was still pretty Dutch heavy.
Cliff Duvernois:And you had tourists coming into town saying, You know what,
Cliff Duvernois:again, where's that Dutch stuff?
Cliff Duvernois:What's Holland, Michigan all about?
Cliff Duvernois:So they got the idea to get, something, an area or a park
Cliff Duvernois:or something to send folks to.
Cliff Duvernois:And obviously being Dutch, the idea was what if we could get one of these
Cliff Duvernois:windmills from the Netherlands, get the, get it over here and show it off?
Cliff Duvernois:So they reached out, to some places in the Netherlands to the Dutch
Cliff Duvernois:government, the Dutch Mill Society.
Cliff Duvernois:And that was the point really, when people were just beginning
Cliff Duvernois:to value their heritage items.
Cliff Duvernois:So in the Netherlands, they had a law that said you were not allowed to, take these
Cliff Duvernois:down or let 'em leave the country anymore.
Cliff Duvernois:But The windmills.
Cliff Duvernois:The windmills, yes, exactly.
Cliff Duvernois:They had about, 10,000 left.
Cliff Duvernois:And a lot of 'em were deteriorating because they didn't
Cliff Duvernois:really use windmills anymore.
Cliff Duvernois:They had modern factories.
Cliff Duvernois:But the city of Holland basically got an exemption that if they could
Cliff Duvernois:find a windmill, the Dutch government would allow them to bring it over.
Cliff Duvernois:And that happened in:Cliff Duvernois:They had sent a delegation over and they happened to find a
Cliff Duvernois:privately owned windmill that was in deteriorating condition.
Cliff Duvernois:They were able to buy it from the owner and got permission to bring
Cliff Duvernois:it here over to West Michigan.
Cliff Duvernois:That's absolutely incredible.
Cliff Duvernois:And I say that because it would be very easy to just say,
Cliff Duvernois:Hey, we got tons of pitchers.
Cliff Duvernois:Let's just build one of our own.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: Yeah, and that's happened subsequently.
Cliff Duvernois:There was one mill, another mill actually allowed to lu leaf to Aruba,
Cliff Duvernois:which was a Dutch colony at the time.
Cliff Duvernois:And, there's other Dutch American spots here in America where they've
Cliff Duvernois:done exactly what you described.
Cliff Duvernois:They've built a brand new windmill.
Cliff Duvernois:They're beautiful.
Cliff Duvernois:They're great.
Cliff Duvernois:They don't have quite the historic status that ours does the story
Cliff Duvernois:way back in the Netherlands.
Cliff Duvernois:But they're neat to see.
Cliff Duvernois:Where did the idea come about to you start planting
Cliff Duvernois:because this is another thing that, you not see a photo of tulip.
Cliff Duvernois:whenever there's a photo of Holland as well.
Cliff Duvernois:You got the windmill.
Cliff Duvernois:You've got the tulips.
Cliff Duvernois:So where did this expanding of creating a garden come from
Cliff Duvernois:and planting of the tulips?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: I think that's just natural.
Cliff Duvernois:If you've been to the Netherlands, they are one of the world's leaders
Cliff Duvernois:in horticulture and flora culture.
Cliff Duvernois:And the most, common flower associated with them is the tulip.
Cliff Duvernois:Tulip Time, it started just, a couple decades before the windmill got here.
Cliff Duvernois:So in town they were plant tulips all over.
Cliff Duvernois:But there's always this desire to have large planted tulip areas.
Cliff Duvernois:And there's a couple places, the NES family had a tulip farm as
Cliff Duvernois:well as some other places in town.
Cliff Duvernois:But they thought we have 36 acres around this windmill.
Cliff Duvernois:Why not make it into gardens?
Cliff Duvernois:So build some Dutch buildings and then plant some Dutch gardens.
Cliff Duvernois:So tulips were here.
Cliff Duvernois:Tulip Time had existed for a little bit before then.
Cliff Duvernois:But really they thought this could be a focal point for the festival.
Cliff Duvernois:Now, one of the things that I do want to talk to
Cliff Duvernois:you about is that typically tulips are not something that blooms year.
Cliff Duvernois:There's like a very short window of time that the tulips are in bloom.
Cliff Duvernois:Hence the reason why you've got the Tulip Festival in tulip time.
Cliff Duvernois:So talk to us about what happens during the rest of the time, when we're outside
Cliff Duvernois:of that window of tulips, what's the major draw to the Window Gardens?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: First I'm really proud
Cliff Duvernois:of you for knowing that.
Cliff Duvernois:Because we get a lot of phone calls and visitors who come in August or call in
Cliff Duvernois:July and wonder where those tulips are.
Cliff Duvernois:But, like you mentioned, we plant a wide variety of tulips.
Cliff Duvernois:So we try and extend that tulip season as long as we can.
Cliff Duvernois:So usually from about mid-April through, we hope mid, mid-may, end
Cliff Duvernois:of May, we'll have tulips in bloom.
Cliff Duvernois:But we also, when those are done, we actually pull them and re.
Cliff Duvernois:most of our gardens with all annuals.
Cliff Duvernois:And we have a number of perennials.
Cliff Duvernois:So we're actually of a two season gardens because our park is open from April,
Cliff Duvernois:middle of April till early October.
Cliff Duvernois:So we have flowers through that whole time.
Cliff Duvernois:We tell people if you wanna see tulips, obviously come in the spring, come
Cliff Duvernois:to around the Tulip Time Festival.
Cliff Duvernois:But otherwise you can come, anytime June through September and see a great
Cliff Duvernois:number of flowers, probably 80 plus different varieties of annuals and
Cliff Duvernois:perennials and trees and things like that.
Cliff Duvernois:And we've really focused on that garden area.
Cliff Duvernois:So we're, we'll, we're still there six months of the year.
Cliff Duvernois:Tulip Time Festival is about half our visitors for the year.
Cliff Duvernois:We usually see 50 to 60,000 people over nine days.
Cliff Duvernois:And we get, lately our numbers have been about 120 to 150,000
Cliff Duvernois:people for this season.
Cliff Duvernois:Yeah.
Cliff Duvernois:It's busy place during Tulip Time and a nice, comfortable, beautiful
Cliff Duvernois:place outside of Tulip Time.
Cliff Duvernois:When you're going in there and working in the garden and you're
Cliff Duvernois:talking about, pulling out all these other plants and putting these things in
Cliff Duvernois:here, why don't you talk to us a little bit about the management of that process.
Cliff Duvernois:How does that work?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: It's really cyclical for the year.
Cliff Duvernois:It's interesting because if you imagine yourself here for the festival, you
Cliff Duvernois:see all the beautiful tulips in bloom.
Cliff Duvernois:That's actually the time when our horticulture staff is beginning
Cliff Duvernois:to plan for the next Tulip Time.
Cliff Duvernois:We put in as a city our tulip order, in the summer.
Cliff Duvernois:So they're planning out, do we want to expand any areas?
Cliff Duvernois:Do we wanna try any new tulips?
Cliff Duvernois:They need to figure that out in June.
Cliff Duvernois:We put the tulip order in, so the tulips, be, are done blooming.
Cliff Duvernois:We have a tulip dig where we invite folks to come and dig a lot of
Cliff Duvernois:those tulips out, locals, anybody.
Cliff Duvernois:And then we replant with annuals.
Cliff Duvernois:And that's then again, in September, we still are looking pretty good.
Cliff Duvernois:The weather's nice, but by October we actually have to pull all those annuals
Cliff Duvernois:out because by then our tulips from the Netherlands that we order every year.
Cliff Duvernois:We need to plant those bulbs.
Cliff Duvernois:So we have to pull everything out, plant those bulbs, and then put
Cliff Duvernois:deer fencing up so our four-legged friends don't eat all of our tulips
Cliff Duvernois:before next season's festival.
Cliff Duvernois:When you put in an order for the Netherlands, how
Cliff Duvernois:many tulips are we talking about?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: So the city as a whole puts
Cliff Duvernois:in a large order altogether.
Cliff Duvernois:Windmill Island plants about 150, 160,000 tulips depending on the year.
Cliff Duvernois:The city does multiple times of that because they have lots of city
Cliff Duvernois:parks that are planted, tulip lanes.
Cliff Duvernois:So we're talking a good size tulip bill, and hundreds of thousands of
Cliff Duvernois:tulips, usually half a million or more.
Cliff Duvernois:And when we're talking about this, what you mentioned
Cliff Duvernois:before, these are all planted by hand?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: They're a lot of 'em are planted by hand.
Cliff Duvernois:We do have a modified onion planter that we use for our
Cliff Duvernois:large agricultural style fields.
Cliff Duvernois:Nice.
Cliff Duvernois:So we have about three or four acres that are the big fields that look like
Cliff Duvernois:you're in a farm, or it looks like you're in the Netherlands, where you
Cliff Duvernois:can get a great picture in front of the windmill with a big field of tulips.
Cliff Duvernois:And then we have some smaller garden bed areas with some more unique varieties.
Cliff Duvernois:Some more small plantings where you can put your kid down in
Cliff Duvernois:front of and get a great picture.
Cliff Duvernois:Or just some neat ones that some of them are very expensive, so we only buy
Cliff Duvernois:maybe a hundred or 200 of them and we can of showcase them in those areas.
Cliff Duvernois:What I'd like to do is take a step back cuz you were talking
Cliff Duvernois:about before, and I believe the term that you used was frugal with the money.
Cliff Duvernois:And I know that the Windmill Island Gardens is a major
Cliff Duvernois:draw and it looks beautiful.
Cliff Duvernois:How are you able to maintain this balance?
Cliff Duvernois:Or how did you get the gardens to where they are today
Cliff Duvernois:versus when they started out?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: That's a great question.
Cliff Duvernois:So the park itself opened in:Cliff Duvernois:wanna say talked into this, but there had been a study done by the state
Cliff Duvernois:that said, man, if you get a windmill and if you're able to do gardens and
Cliff Duvernois:Dutch buildings, you'll get a million people here a year to visit this place.
Cliff Duvernois:That was obviously an overshot.
Cliff Duvernois:We've never been near.
Cliff Duvernois:We hit our record number last year and we were about 150,000.
Cliff Duvernois:Those first several years were very busy.
Cliff Duvernois:People came and saw the windmill, came and saw the gardens, checked it out.
Cliff Duvernois:That, those numbers lasted for 20, 25 years and then our
Cliff Duvernois:attendance started to go down.
Cliff Duvernois:Cultural tourism wasn't really the hot thing back then.
Cliff Duvernois:There's lots of competition.
Cliff Duvernois:The Cedar Points and Michigan Adventures of the World.
Cliff Duvernois:Kids liked to do that.
Cliff Duvernois:So our numbers through the kind of late eighties and the end of the
Cliff Duvernois:nineties went down to the point where we were only getting about
Cliff Duvernois:40,000, 50,000 visitors a year.
Cliff Duvernois:The, it was actually costing the city several hundred thousand dollars just
Cliff Duvernois:to keep the place open for tourists.
Cliff Duvernois:The city at that point had a decision.
Cliff Duvernois:Do we just make this into a municipal park, allow it for free, not have as many
Cliff Duvernois:attractions, or do we somehow redo this?
Cliff Duvernois:Fortunately they, they gave it another shot.
Cliff Duvernois:And with that, the, tourism's been back in the two thousands, has
Cliff Duvernois:been doing a little bit better.
Cliff Duvernois:So we cut everything we could at that point.
Cliff Duvernois:Really analyzed all the spending we were doing.
Cliff Duvernois:all the employees we had.
Cliff Duvernois:Again, tourism numbers went back up.
Cliff Duvernois:So it was a good Crosspoint where of the things we developed, some new programs,
Cliff Duvernois:new events, a focus on, like you said, those gardens outside of Tulip Time.
Cliff Duvernois:Tulip time's a blessing.
Cliff Duvernois:But we knew we needed more people here in June, July, August, September.
Cliff Duvernois:So we've continued to see that.
Cliff Duvernois:And that's definitely a focus of ours.
Cliff Duvernois:We've managed to turn the place around.
Cliff Duvernois:So we we don't take any general fund money.
Cliff Duvernois:We're self-sustaining with about 150,000 visitors a year.
Cliff Duvernois:We have some great programs.
Cliff Duvernois:We have things like weddings that we added.
Cliff Duvernois:Those have been a nice revenue stream in about the last 20 years or so.
Cliff Duvernois:So again, just looking at things consciously of how do we develop this
Cliff Duvernois:place, keep it self-sustaining, keep it, a fun place for people to visit who have
Cliff Duvernois:either never been here or who've been here before and wanna see something different.
Cliff Duvernois:And for our audience, we're gonna take a quick
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Cliff Duvernois:Hello everyone.
Cliff Duvernois:Welcome back to Ordinary People, Extraordinary Things.
Cliff Duvernois:I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois.
Cliff Duvernois:Today we are talking with Matt Helmus.
Cliff Duvernois:He is with the Windmill Island Gardens Development Manager
Cliff Duvernois:for the city of Holland.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt, before the break, you had made a comment about sustainability.
Cliff Duvernois:And what I would like to do is I'd like to talk about some
Cliff Duvernois:of the programs that you got.
Cliff Duvernois:Sustainability is one of like hot button items that people are
Cliff Duvernois:really getting jazzed up about.
Cliff Duvernois:So talk to us a little bit about that sustainability.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: Yeah, so that's a great thing, we can
Cliff Duvernois:accomplish on Windmill Island was talking about sustainability as one of our themes.
Cliff Duvernois:So it's really neat that we have the windmill as the center of our operations.
Cliff Duvernois:And we talk to folks about, modern wind energy is really
Cliff Duvernois:taking off with these newer style windmills that get electricity.
Cliff Duvernois:But we can talk about that.
Cliff Duvernois:That's been going on for four or 500 plus years.
Cliff Duvernois:So we show in our windmill, it doesn't take power, it actually produces power.
Cliff Duvernois:We catch the wind and we can grind grain in there.
Cliff Duvernois:And we still do that to this day.
Cliff Duvernois:Then we have an energy park, right across the park from us as a natural gas plant
Cliff Duvernois:that was built just a few years ago.
Cliff Duvernois:That's very modern that the city built.
Cliff Duvernois:Very efficient.
Cliff Duvernois:But we can say, that's how we get power today.
Cliff Duvernois:This is how folks got power back in the 15, 16, 17 hundreds.
Cliff Duvernois:We do a lot of talk with gardening, sustainable gardening, and we're also a
Cliff Duvernois:absolutely beautiful natural area where we have a lot of wildlife friends out
Cliff Duvernois:there, a lot of birds, a lot of mammals.
Cliff Duvernois:So people like to come out there, go bird watching, just check out our park.
Cliff Duvernois:And we try and do that all in the most sustainable way we can,
Cliff Duvernois:gardening wise and just, tourism.
Cliff Duvernois:What I would like to do is talk about outside of Tulip Time
Cliff Duvernois:is I'd like to talk about some of the other events that you have going on
Cliff Duvernois:in the gardens throughout the year.
Cliff Duvernois:So if you would just share with us a couple of the things.
Cliff Duvernois:that come to mind.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: Yeah.
Cliff Duvernois:So every year we try and do a different theme, in our garden.
Cliff Duvernois:So when we pull all those tulips and plant the annuals, we try
Cliff Duvernois:and do it differently every year.
Cliff Duvernois:So you don't come and see the same flowers in the same spot every year.
Cliff Duvernois:So like this year, our theme is a celestial season.
Cliff Duvernois:So our plantings will be planted around the theme of sun, moon, and stars.
Cliff Duvernois:So some of the plants will have certain names that suggest that.
Cliff Duvernois:There's one called Drops of Jupiter, which of course I can't
Cliff Duvernois:remember what kind of plant that is.
Cliff Duvernois:But a lot of 'em are name wise.
Cliff Duvernois:Some of them will be artistic in the bed, might look like a
Cliff Duvernois:moon or something like that.
Cliff Duvernois:it's, so that's really neat so kids and adults can really go through
Cliff Duvernois:the gardens and see that theme.
Cliff Duvernois:With that, we'll have some associated programming.
Cliff Duvernois:We're hoping to do some stargazing and that sort of stuff out there.
Cliff Duvernois:It's great.
Cliff Duvernois:Yeah, we're right on the edge of downtown.
Cliff Duvernois:But we're far enough away that we don't have so much light pollution.
Cliff Duvernois:So folks can come out and stargaze.
Cliff Duvernois:We've also, this year, just this is last winter started a called Magic the Mill.
Cliff Duvernois:It's a Christmas light event that we ran for three weekends around Christmas
Cliff Duvernois:time and yeah, we lit up the park.
Cliff Duvernois:We did keep our theme, so we didn't want to go completely out of our theme area.
Cliff Duvernois:So the highlight of it was really about a thousand or a thousand l e d
Cliff Duvernois:light tulip field that had a sound.
Cliff Duvernois:Music basically to it.
Cliff Duvernois:So it lit up sound and light show.
Cliff Duvernois:I tell people, imagine if the Tulip Festival and the musical
Cliff Duvernois:fountain in Grand Haven had a baby and it would be this tulip field.
Cliff Duvernois:So it's, you got music, you got light, and you got tulips.
Cliff Duvernois:So it was a, it was a big hit.
Cliff Duvernois:We sold out, several of the weekends.
Cliff Duvernois:Again, just a way to invite people down year round, down to Windmill Island.
Cliff Duvernois:Now when you're talking about this light show that's
Cliff Duvernois:being put on, is it something that people walk around and see or is it
Cliff Duvernois:something that you do in your car?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: Yep, it's a walk around.
Cliff Duvernois:So our park, doesn't have so much, we have a limited parking lot.
Cliff Duvernois:So it's not like what they do in Grand Rapids at the White Cap Stadium.
Cliff Duvernois:It is a walk around.
Cliff Duvernois:But it's a great kind of, it's maybe about half a mile walk.
Cliff Duvernois:But it's beautifully lit up outside.
Cliff Duvernois:And we have things in our buildings.
Cliff Duvernois:We have food available.
Cliff Duvernois:Kids can visit Sinterklaas, who's the Dutch equivalent of Santa Claus.
Cliff Duvernois:They can hear our street organ playing, holiday favorite.
Cliff Duvernois:They can ride the carousel.
Cliff Duvernois:They can come in and get a cup of hot cocoa.
Cliff Duvernois:It's, it was just a absolute hit for our community and for a lot of visitors.
Cliff Duvernois:And that's another thing too that's seems to
Cliff Duvernois:be really popular in the windmill garden is that piano organ thing.
Cliff Duvernois:The thing is huge.
Cliff Duvernois:Where did that come from?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: That's a whole nother, we call
Cliff Duvernois:it our three Dutch treasures.
Cliff Duvernois:So obviously the windmill is the heart of the island.
Cliff Duvernois:Our, we have a carousel that we brought over in the seventies.
Cliff Duvernois:But the street organ is the other third of our Dutch treasures.
Cliff Duvernois:That actually predates the island.
Cliff Duvernois:And it goes back to World War II when the Netherlands was devastated by Germany.
Cliff Duvernois:And a lot of people in this area, being of Dutch extract sent food,
Cliff Duvernois:money, clothing back to the homeland.
Cliff Duvernois:And as a way to say thank you, in Amsterdam, the school kids raised
Cliff Duvernois:money, bought an organ, and the city sent it over to Holland, Michigan.
Cliff Duvernois:so we've had that organ since:Cliff Duvernois:And it's still, we for a couple decades it wasn't functioning.
Cliff Duvernois:But we do work on it now every year.
Cliff Duvernois:So it plays fun.
Cliff Duvernois:Dutch songs, fun American songs, things like the beach Boys even.
Cliff Duvernois:It's run like a player piano, if you've seen the back there.
Cliff Duvernois:Yes.
Cliff Duvernois:we don't play it like an instrument, we play it like a player piano.
Cliff Duvernois:So it's a highlight for old, old folks.
Cliff Duvernois:For young kids.
Cliff Duvernois:They get to hear some favorites on there.
Cliff Duvernois:So it's an absolute fun piece to have at the island.
Cliff Duvernois:Now, typically when the garden is opened and en close.
Cliff Duvernois:Is this something that's really set on a set schedule?
Cliff Duvernois:Are you letting the weather dictate when this is open?
Cliff Duvernois:How does that work?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: So our season is,
Cliff Duvernois:mid-April through October.
Cliff Duvernois:And we are open seven days a week in that season.
Cliff Duvernois:And we will very rarely shut due to bad weather.
Cliff Duvernois:Because the nice thing is we have great gardens to enjoy outside.
Cliff Duvernois:But there's also a portion of it inside.
Cliff Duvernois:You can still hear the organ inside the organ shelter.
Cliff Duvernois:You can hear, you can go in into the windmill, you can visit our shops.
Cliff Duvernois:We have movies that you can see on site.
Cliff Duvernois:We have a conservatory.
Cliff Duvernois:So really we are open, rain winds shine, we are there.
Cliff Duvernois:Sometimes snow.
Cliff Duvernois:We hope.
Cliff Duvernois:No, we hope no snow while we're open, but happens on occasion.
Cliff Duvernois:With regards to putting on the festival, maintaining the gardens,
Cliff Duvernois:what would you say would be some of your biggest challenges that you have to face?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: Weather would be one
Cliff Duvernois:that we just touched on.
Cliff Duvernois:Staffing is another.
Cliff Duvernois:We are very fortunate.
Cliff Duvernois:During the Tulip Time Festival, we staff up to about 75 people.
Cliff Duvernois:During the rest of the season, we have anywhere between 40 and 50 staff.
Cliff Duvernois:Just like everywhere these days, it's hard to find staff.
Cliff Duvernois:So we're, scrambling and hiring now to make sure we have enough
Cliff Duvernois:people to greet visitors.
Cliff Duvernois:Because we know if we're there, we wanna provide a good experience.
Cliff Duvernois:We wanna make sure that we have people there to sell you your ticket.
Cliff Duvernois:But as well as to greet you, to show you around the park, tell you
Cliff Duvernois:all about what we have to offer.
Cliff Duvernois:So that's always a changing crowd of folks there.
Cliff Duvernois:So we have a lot of younger people and then some early retirees.
Cliff Duvernois:So you can always find a, friendly, smiling face to show you're on the island.
Cliff Duvernois:One of the things that we talked about with Mayor Bocks
Cliff Duvernois:was the fact that all of this new manufacturing is coming into town and
Cliff Duvernois:people are expanding their companies.
Cliff Duvernois:How is that going to impact the Windmill Gardens?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: We hope it only helps us really.
Cliff Duvernois:One really cool thing we can do at the island is we share different
Cliff Duvernois:stories with all different people.
Cliff Duvernois:Some people think we're this old, Dutch Heritage Park only if you're interested
Cliff Duvernois:in Dutch stuff, would they visit.
Cliff Duvernois:But actually it's neat.
Cliff Duvernois:We say under this big Dutch umbrella, we can share a lot of stories.
Cliff Duvernois:We can share agriculture, horticulture, engineering, music.
Cliff Duvernois:Any sorts of things like that.
Cliff Duvernois:So one of the most amazing things to us is when we connect with some of
Cliff Duvernois:these business groups and you watch these engineers go up in the windmill,
Cliff Duvernois:that's hundreds of years old, and they see the gears and they start geeking
Cliff Duvernois:out about, the gear ratios and things like that and what kind of wood is
Cliff Duvernois:used in those and how do they design this back in the 16, 17 hundreds.
Cliff Duvernois:it's amazing to see.
Cliff Duvernois:So we've seen several local companies actually partner
Cliff Duvernois:with us on different projects.
Cliff Duvernois:We had a scout group come in and was helping us do some
Cliff Duvernois:metal work in the windmill.
Cliff Duvernois:Because it's an old way to produce food.
Cliff Duvernois:We still get to deal with the agriculture department.
Cliff Duvernois:And they say everything that food touches has to be stainless steel.
Cliff Duvernois:Well, that was a little hard.
Cliff Duvernois:Everything was wood.
Cliff Duvernois:So they actually helped us take apart the machinery we had and
Cliff Duvernois:put stainless steel on the inside.
Cliff Duvernois:So the inside's very modern but the outside still has that wood, exterior.
Cliff Duvernois:So it looks historical.
Cliff Duvernois:And that was a local metal company that helped us do that.
Cliff Duvernois:So we're very fortunate to have such a thriving manufacturing
Cliff Duvernois:business community in this area.
Cliff Duvernois:I'm loving this synergy between the garden and the man and the
Cliff Duvernois:manufacturing that's going on in the area.
Cliff Duvernois:And you hinted on this before, is that the windmill is still producing food.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: It does.
Cliff Duvernois:Yep.
Cliff Duvernois:So we are currently training, new millers as we speak.
Cliff Duvernois:The windmills turning, we are training some new folks to be able to grind.
Cliff Duvernois:That that's a, an interesting process.
Cliff Duvernois:It's not something you can go learn in the town next door.
Cliff Duvernois:So we're having some help from folks from the Netherlands and
Cliff Duvernois:some other mills in the US.
Cliff Duvernois:But yeah, we typically produce about 15,000 pounds of grain every year.
Cliff Duvernois:it
Cliff Duvernois:Sweet
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: to flour.
Cliff Duvernois:Yeah,
Cliff Duvernois:just from the one windmill.
Cliff Duvernois:And that's, that only takes a couple days a year of grinding.
Cliff Duvernois:We can grind, two to:Cliff Duvernois:So it doesn't take that long.
Cliff Duvernois:It takes a lot to package because your typical tourist doesn't want to
Cliff Duvernois:take home a 50 pound sack of flour.
Cliff Duvernois:Like we would've, usually way back given to people.
Cliff Duvernois:They wanna bring home, maybe a pound or two bag of flour to be able to
Cliff Duvernois:make cookies or bread out of it.
Cliff Duvernois:So mostly sold right on site.
Cliff Duvernois:Oh, that's, that was gonna be my next question is do
Cliff Duvernois:you do baked goods with it as well?
Cliff Duvernois:If somebody wants to get a loaf of bread, cuz this was made in a real windmill.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: So we sell in the flour.
Cliff Duvernois:We have done some cool projects in the past where people have made beers and
Cliff Duvernois:baked goods and things like that out of, the things we produce in the windmill.
Cliff Duvernois:So some neat projects, some neat, yeah, good things to taste, good
Cliff Duvernois:things to eat and drink as well.
Cliff Duvernois:Now, how are you working with the actual city of Holland?
Cliff Duvernois:Because as we're doing this interview right now, we're actually in city hall.
Cliff Duvernois:So how are you working with the city to make sure that you've got this balance
Cliff Duvernois:of people that can still come out and see the gardens versus being in town?
Cliff Duvernois:Cruising the streets?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: Yeah.
Cliff Duvernois:So the cool thing is we are municipally owned gardens.
Cliff Duvernois:So we are set up what's called an entrepreneurial fund, kind
Cliff Duvernois:of like, uh, city golf courses, cemeteries, parking facilities are.
Cliff Duvernois:So we're meant to be self-sustaining, that we don't suck money
Cliff Duvernois:out of the general fund.
Cliff Duvernois:We sustain our own budget.
Cliff Duvernois:But we're really a benefit for the city and the city thankfully the
Cliff Duvernois:city council's very they appreciate what we do out there because they
Cliff Duvernois:know lots of people come to see us.
Cliff Duvernois:We are city owned.
Cliff Duvernois:That the city does have some control over what goes on out there.
Cliff Duvernois:But we also can work with great partner organizations like Tulip
Cliff Duvernois:Time, like our visitors bureau, like our Chamber of Commerce.
Cliff Duvernois:So we're a little bit more entrepreneurial in that sense as
Cliff Duvernois:well, that we can do some things that normal city governments don't do.
Cliff Duvernois:And we do some of those fun projects.
Cliff Duvernois:So I say, I probably have the most fun job out of any of the city employees here.
Cliff Duvernois:I'm not, processing forms.
Cliff Duvernois:I'm not in a police cruiser, things like that.
Cliff Duvernois:My day job is running a heritage park, which really changes day to day.
Cliff Duvernois:But it's really neat.
Cliff Duvernois:It's a way for the city to draw visitors to welcome visitors,
Cliff Duvernois:in a very unique setting.
Cliff Duvernois:One of the things that I would like to discuss is that
Cliff Duvernois:whenever, and we've brought this up several times, whenever we're looking
Cliff Duvernois:at pictures of Holland, it is typically, like right now, I got a Shoreline
Cliff Duvernois:magazine, and the very first photo is of the windmill, and it's above the tulip.
Cliff Duvernois:So literally, this is almost like the face of the city of Holland.
Cliff Duvernois:Talk to us a little bit about having that type of pressure that y
Cliff Duvernois:you've gotta maintain those gardens.
Cliff Duvernois:Those gardens have got to be like spot on.
Cliff Duvernois:So talk to us about managing that pressure on top of managing all
Cliff Duvernois:these people to make sure that you are living up to this mental image
Cliff Duvernois:that people have of the Holland area.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: Yeah, Yeah,
Cliff Duvernois:it's, it's a, I typically look at it as a good thing is that, again, when folks
Cliff Duvernois:are visiting, one of the first things they see is usually an image of the windmill.
Cliff Duvernois:Or they know they came to Holland and we, they heard about this
Cliff Duvernois:old windmill that we have.
Cliff Duvernois:So they ask to see us.
Cliff Duvernois:So we have a readymade crowd.
Cliff Duvernois:It helps with marketing that way.
Cliff Duvernois:But like you said, it's also.
Cliff Duvernois:we do wanna make sure we're doing a great job representing the whole
Cliff Duvernois:community as well, so we're not just representing the Dutch community.
Cliff Duvernois:And that's again, where we look at we're, it's not all Dutch people live in Holland.
Cliff Duvernois:There's just a chunk of us now that, that are Dutch Americans.
Cliff Duvernois:We have a lot of other folks here with us too.
Cliff Duvernois:So the city really values that.
Cliff Duvernois:And that's why we've looked at those different ways.
Cliff Duvernois:Some STEM ways.
Cliff Duvernois:We have a new, water exhibit area that we're developing.
Cliff Duvernois:Again, you can come, you don't have to give a rich a rip about Dutch
Cliff Duvernois:heritage to enjoy a water exhibit.
Cliff Duvernois:And you learn how the Dutch have dealt with it in the past, but how
Cliff Duvernois:we're dealing with it currently.
Cliff Duvernois:But we just wanna connect with everybody who visits in any way.
Cliff Duvernois:And for our local community, we have walking and biking trails
Cliff Duvernois:out there that folks will come out and just enjoy that area.
Cliff Duvernois:We have, free access to folks who live in Holland, Michigan.
Cliff Duvernois:We.
Cliff Duvernois:We provide free access to them, cuz the last thing we want is to be
Cliff Duvernois:seen as a tourist trap or something that, you only bring, you only go
Cliff Duvernois:there when your grandkids are here or you got friends from out of town.
Cliff Duvernois:We like people to go down there pretty often.
Cliff Duvernois:So we don't love to hear, I've never been there.
Cliff Duvernois:I've only been there in third grade on my field trip.
Cliff Duvernois:We like when Hollands come and visit, city of Holland, folks come and visit as
Cliff Duvernois:well as just anybody who comes and visits.
Cliff Duvernois:But, the Visitors Bureau tells people go visit.
Cliff Duvernois:Magazines tell people go visit.
Cliff Duvernois:So it is nice that we have a already built crowd.
Cliff Duvernois:We just try and do our best to make sure we're looking
Cliff Duvernois:our best when they get there.
Cliff Duvernois:Certainly, and a couple things that you've mentioned
Cliff Duvernois:in this interview is the fact that it seems like between, Holland,
Cliff Duvernois:Michigan versus Holland, Netherlands.
Cliff Duvernois:It seems like there's been like a lot of the times where the people
Cliff Duvernois:in the Netherlands have actually come over here and helped out.
Cliff Duvernois:Talk to us a little bit about that relationship there.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: Yeah, that's, again, we value that
Cliff Duvernois:I think as a city and definitely at Wind Island Gardens as the park.
Cliff Duvernois:we realize that we have to keep a connection there.
Cliff Duvernois:We're trying to show off a piece of Dutch heritage and the windmill
Cliff Duvernois:and the organ and things like that.
Cliff Duvernois:So the city actually sent me over to the Netherlands about three
Cliff Duvernois:years ago, prior to the pandemic, and I connected with a lot of these
Cliff Duvernois:people who have similar jobs that.
Cliff Duvernois:showing off, older Dutch heritage.
Cliff Duvernois:But doing it in a modern context.
Cliff Duvernois:So we really brainstormed and said, I was trying to learn from
Cliff Duvernois:'em, how are you doing this?
Cliff Duvernois:you're a multicultural nation at this point.
Cliff Duvernois:So how do you tell everyone's story?
Cliff Duvernois:And how do you make everyone feel included?
Cliff Duvernois:And what stories are you telling that aren't just old history.
Cliff Duvernois:I love old history.
Cliff Duvernois:But I know I'm a, I'm a unique guy that a lot of people don't love to just read
Cliff Duvernois:history all day and learn about old stuff.
Cliff Duvernois:They want something relevant to them.
Cliff Duvernois:And that's what we found some great ideas.
Cliff Duvernois:That's where we got the idea for our water exhibit.
Cliff Duvernois:And they were really falling over themselves to help us because they
Cliff Duvernois:thought it was so neat that people are telling a bit of Dutch culture and Dutch
Cliff Duvernois:history here in America, the Midwest.
Cliff Duvernois:And they're doing the same thing over in the Netherlands.
Cliff Duvernois:So they've been very helpful providing materials, translations,
Cliff Duvernois:trainings, kind of anything we want, they've been helpful with.
Cliff Duvernois:And the neat thing is, even the town of the windmill came from, we bought
Cliff Duvernois:that windmill from a very small town.
Cliff Duvernois:And that windmill was the heart of the community.
Cliff Duvernois:And they've since rebuilt their own windmill that just opened
Cliff Duvernois:about the time I visited.
Cliff Duvernois:So it was really neat to go and connect with them.
Cliff Duvernois:And now we have a good relationship, working relationship.
Cliff Duvernois:We call it our sister mill over in the Netherlands.
Cliff Duvernois:So they're happy to help us do training, happy to help us do marketing as well.
Cliff Duvernois:Nice.
Cliff Duvernois:Because I can imagine from their standpoint it's, cuz those original
Cliff Duvernois:settlers that came over here were now four or five generations past.
Cliff Duvernois:So to still be able to cling that heritage has got, it's got, probably
Cliff Duvernois:gotta make them pretty proud.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: it.
Cliff Duvernois:It is.
Cliff Duvernois:And one of the neatest compliments we can get is, we'll get some Dutch visitors and
Cliff Duvernois:we'll see 'em going through the park and sometimes we'll get told, Hey, I think
Cliff Duvernois:that person I heard a little accent.
Cliff Duvernois:They might be from the Netherlands.
Cliff Duvernois:And we'll talk to them and say, how did, how'd you hear about us?
Cliff Duvernois:And then what did you think?
Cliff Duvernois:And the best compliment we can get is when people say, it really
Cliff Duvernois:felt like a little slice of home.
Cliff Duvernois:It looked like the Netherlands here, the way you have the garden set up
Cliff Duvernois:and the canals and the windmill.
Cliff Duvernois:And I think they appreciate, as do we, that we're not, again,
Cliff Duvernois:we're not trying to do it as a kitche thing, as a tourist trap.
Cliff Duvernois:We don't want to just, pull out our windmills, wooden shoes, tulips,
Cliff Duvernois:and just show 'em the stereotypes.
Cliff Duvernois:We want to give ' em a little bit broader picture of the Netherlands
Cliff Duvernois:as well as Holland, Michigan.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt, if somebody's listening to this interview and they
Cliff Duvernois:wanna connect with you or follow what it is that you're doing online, what would
Cliff Duvernois:be the best way for them to connect?
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: The best way to go to our
Cliff Duvernois:website, windmill island.com.
Cliff Duvernois:And again, our park is open.
Cliff Duvernois:We open here April 15 and we'll be open through the early part of October.
Cliff Duvernois:We are $12 for adults.
Cliff Duvernois:$6 for kids with group rates as well.
Cliff Duvernois:And we're there seven days a week.
Cliff Duvernois:Come at tulip time or come summer or fall and we'll be looking beautiful.
Cliff Duvernois:Excellent.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt, thanks so much for taking time to, chat with us today.
Cliff Duvernois:Matt Helmus, Windmill Gardens Holland Michigan: Thank you, Cliff.
Cliff Duvernois:And for our audience, you can go to total michigan.com, click
Cliff Duvernois:on Matt's interview and see all the links that he shared with us above.
Cliff Duvernois:And we will catch you next time with another great interview.