Category: Beyond the Olympic Peninsula

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, 2

Two big tulip growers in the Skagit Valley welcome visitors and we quickly found our favorite: RoozeGaarde. A $5 admission fee gives wandering privileges through beautifully planted gardens. The views are stunning.

RooseGaarde has been in business for nearly 60 years and is run by the five sons of the original owners, immigrants from – where else? – Holland. The gardens are replanted each fall with nearly 250,000 flower bulbs, a process that takes about 10 weeks. Their catalog claims they are the biggest bulb grower in the U.S.

A local innkeeper told us that with bus tours the gardens can see up to 15,000 visitors a day, making the mantra “get there early” good advice. Despite the steady flows of people everyone we met here was uniformly friendly and courteous.

There are plenty of fields for driveby viewing so it’s not necessary to pay to view. But this is a great spot to see labeled specimens, get planting ideas, and experience the wow factor of professional designs.

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, 1

We spent two technicolor days earlier this week “out of territory,” visiting the annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The festival runs the entire month of April, driven, of course, by the blooming time of the tulips. But it couldn’t come at a better time for the winter weary and color-starved visitors who flock to the area by the thousands. The vast fields of tulips are a welcome tonic and the palette of spring colors could jolt the severest winter catatonic back to life.

The Skagit Valley is a ferry ride and easterly drive from the Olympic Peninsula to a broad agricultural valley 60 miles north of Seattle. Vast fields showcase the gorgeous flowers that are sold as both cut flowers and, later on, as bulbs by the valley’s two primary growers.

To call it “eye candy” would be an understatement. Though I trained my camera on a good many other sights, I came home with over 300 shots. Wish me luck as I pare down the selection. . .and come back over the next few days to tiptoe through the tulips with me.