Although the Dutch have the cute habit of calling anything higher than a speed bump a mountain, the Netherlands is largely a flat and soggy bog. Vast amounts of land has been reclaimed from the sea over the centuries, and the drained polders are protected by dykes, very few of which are plugged by little boys’ fingers. More than half of the country lies below sea level and only in the southeast Limburg province will you find hills. The Netherlands is bordered by the North Sea, Belgium and Germany. The Rhine is the major river, slurping up run-off from the proper mountains in Germany and Switzerland and slopping it out all over the flatlands.

Forget about wilderness in the Netherlands. This is Europe’s most densely populated country, but it feels like the most organised place in the world. The western hoop of cities including Amsterdam, the Hague and Rotterdam is one of the most densely populated conurbations on earth, and even out of this area it doesn’t get exactly isolated. Towns often blur from one to the next, linked by highways and bicycle paths. Neat, flat, muddy fields and tame and pleasant woodlands act as buffers; there are even places where you can hear the twittering of birds above the constant traffic drone.

Mention plant-life in the Netherlands and most people think of tulips. Indeed these cultivated bulbs are in many ways representative of much of country’s flora in that they were imported from elsewhere (in this case Asia) and then commercially exploited. A range of fruits, vegetables and other flowers fit this profile. Much of the nondeveloped land is covered by grass, which is widely used for grazing. The wet weather means that the grass remains green and growing for much of the year. The areas that are wooded, such as De Hoge Veluwe National Park, have mostly been planted with fairly young trees. Even the vegetation on the islands such as Ameland are heavily managed by the government to control erosion.

Birds thrive in the watery lands of the Netherlands and the marshes and wetlands are major migration stops for European birds. At various times of the year you can see gulls, terns, herons and many more species. The white stork with its huge nest is protected by numerous laws and the population seems stable. Ravens and many other birds find food aplenty in the pastures and farms. Larger mammals are mainly found in small numbers in the national parks and reserves. These include deer, fox and badgers. Small mammals such as muskrats are common in the country and less salubrious rodents such as common rats find ample shelter in the cities with their many old and damp places. A variety of fish species live in the nation’s canals and estuaries. One of the most interesting species is the eel, which survives in both fresh and salt water and is common in canals, yet it would have been born from one of 20 million eggs laid by its mother at a depth of 250 metres in the Sargasso Sea off Bermuda! White bream, rudd, pike, perch, stickleback and carp also enjoy the canal environment. There are 12 crustacean species in the coastal waters, of which the common shrimp and the epidemic import, the Chinese mitten crab, are the most common.