Important Information: Some Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival activities and events may not be offered in 2022 due to the current pandemic and social distance constraints. Visit their website for additional details.
The greatest time to visit tulip fields in the Portland, Oregon area is during the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival. The event is hosted every year at the 40-acre tulip farm known as Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm in Woodburn, Oregon. The Wooden Shoe Farm is a fantastic location for viewing tulip fields in the spring and is well worth the trek from Portland!
I made sure I didn’t miss the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival since we were unable to travel to the Netherlands the previous spring. (Can you blame us for choosing Paris over Amsterdam?) But as a result, I was quite eager to see some tulips! I mean, how could you not, especially after learning (later) during your visit to Amsterdam that the Dutch Golden Age’s economic collapse was caused by tulip bulbs.
Fun Fact: Tulips were originally from central Asia but didn’t find popularity until they reached the Netherlands.
On my subsequent trip to Portland, I made sure to stop by the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival! It’s a fantastic stop if you’re heading to Portland on the weekend (or for a few days), and it’s especially ideal for a half-day or day excursion from Portland, as you’ll learn in this post.
PRO TIP: Visit the Woodburn Premium Outlets for some bargain shopping if you’re hoping to make a day trip out of the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival!
Do you enjoy admiring lovely flower fields? Visit the Californian Pageo Lavender Farm.
Where in the US is the largest tulip festival held?
- Since 1986, the Bartlett Arboretum in Belle Plaine, Kansas, has hosted its annual Tulip Time Festival, which features arts and crafts, live music, a carnival, and other entertaining activities. The largest concentration of tulips ever planted in the United States was in Belle Plaine.
- The Dutch Days celebration in Fulton, Illinois, takes place on the first weekend in May. The neighbourhood Christian school hosted the inaugural “Authentic Dutch Dinner” in 1974.
- The annual Tulip Festival in Orange City, Iowa, which takes place on the third weekend in May, is cherished by the locals and include a flower exhibit, an evening production of a Broadway play, daytime and evening parades, and street dancing by both young and old. Over 150,000 people attend the celebration, which starts on Wednesday for the locals and runs through Saturday.
- The Tulip Time event, held in Pella, Iowa, also in early May, was started in 1935 to honour the town’s history. The three-day festival includes street cleaning parades, wooden shoe dancers dressed in costumes, wooden shoe carving demonstrations, poffertje vendors, and an old Dutch street organ.
- The largest tulip festival in the United States, the Tulip Time Festival in Holland, Michigan, takes place in early May and boasts more than 4.5 million tulips. More than 600,000 people attend each year.
How much does a trip to Tulip Town cost?
To provide you the best possible tulip experience, Tulip Town will be opening earlier and staying open longer in addition to transitioning to online ticketing.
General Admission, Experience Pass, and Photography Pass are the three available passes. $15 for those aged 12 and over, $7 for those aged 6 to 11, and free for those under the age of 5. The cost of a fresh Anytime ticket has increased to $25. (one full day admission, not time reservation necessary).
The Tulip Bloom field, tulip gardens, indoor tulip exhibit, and barn experience are all included in the General Admission price, along with parking and a trolley trip. The $50 Experience pass includes everything in General Admission as well as a mini-workshop and escorted entrance into the field where you will be shown how to pick your own bouquet. It also comes with a mini-workshop and a concierge service. Along with a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, you’ll return home with your prized blooms and insider knowledge from the Tulip Town pros! The Photography Admission, last but not least, costs $100 for a day pass and $375 for a season pass. The tulip field and gardens are only accessible with a Photography Pass between the hours of sunrise and sunset and throughout regular business hours.
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is held where?
The greatest tulip fields in North America are found in Skagit Valley, which is a region of northwest Washington. Being only 60 miles north of Seattle and close to Interstate 5 makes the region accessible. Only 70 miles separate Skagit Valley from Vancouver, British Columbia. It’s the ideal location for both a day trip and a longer stay. Additionally, the closest town, Mount Vernon, is served by the Amtrak Cascades train service.
Where is the best festival for tulips?
The Dutchest place on Earth is Holland, Michigan. The city, which is on Lake Michigan and is approximately a 3-hour drive from Detroit, annually hosts one of the biggest and most well-known tulip festivals in the country. Five million blossoming tulips that were planted by the Parks and Recreation Department all throughout the city are blooming during the eight-day festival known as Tulip Time, which also includes parades, concerts, art installations, and traditional Dutch dance performances.
What To Eat
Enjoy traditional Dutch foods like saucijzenbroodjes, or Dutch pigs in a blanket, and buttery krakelingen, which are sweets filled with almond paste. Both are offered by the nearby DeBoer Bakery.
Pro Tip
The busiest times of the week are usually the weekends. If you intend to travel at that time, make sure to reserve your lodging well in advance. See this article for additional details and advice.
What season is ideal for visiting Tulip Festival?
The event, which is held every year throughout the month of April and occasionally, if you’re lucky, even into May, is sponsored by two of the valley’s biggest tulip growers: Roozengarde and Tulip Town. Garden Rosalyn is a brand-new addition to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival gardens for 2022!
Fun Fact: More tulip, iris, and daffodil bulbs are produced in Skagit County than in any other area in the United States.
The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival takes place in 2022 between March 25 and May 1 at Roozengarde, between April 130 and both Tulip Town and Garden Rosalyn. Having said that, the flowers are reliant on Mother Nature, so they might blossom at any point in April. If the blossoms occur early in 2022, the tulip festival may potentially get underway before April.
The Best Time to Visit the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in 2022
The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is held in Roozengarde between March 25 and May 1, 2022, and at Tulip Town and Garden Rosalyn between April 1 and 30, 2022, thus the best time to go would undoubtedly be in April.
The tulips were still stunning when we went in the last week of April in 2019, but my coworker said that the best time to go is in the middle of April when they will be at their best. However, keep in mind that these projections are just loose and heavily influenced by the weather.
You might even be able to see the daffodils in bloom if you go earlier in the month, in early April. They often bloom a little sooner than tulips, but sadly we missed seeing those.
ADVICE: If you have the chance to visit during the week, take it! There are fewer people and fewer crowds, and entrance to the display gardens is less expensive.
It is still possible to visit on the weekend, but you should arrive as early as you can to avoid traffic and congestion. When we got there around 10 o’clock, most of the tulip fields were deserted.
Fun Fact: If you leave the tulips blooming past their peak for too long, it ruins the bulbs. That’s why you might see cut stems in the fields if you’re visiting later in the season.
The tulips normally have passed their full bloom stage by the time you visit too late in the season and will soon be wilting. Read about our trip to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm in May to see for yourself what happens if you visit tulip farms too late in the season, as I did.
Tulips normally bloom around April, though depending on the weather, they can begin as early as March and last as late as May.
How to Get to Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
When we went, we arrived early in the morning by a flight from San Francisco to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), rented a car, and then proceeded directly up to the Skagit Valley.
The distance is about 75 miles and the travel time via Interstate 5 North from the Seattle airport. It is approximately about 60 miles and a one-hour drive away from Seattle.
Without taking into account crossing the border (because, let’s face it, nobody really knows how long it will take), the trip from Vancouver to the tulip festival is south on Interstate 5 and should take about 1 hour and 45 minutes for a distance of 135 kilometres.
We encountered traffic on the way back into the city, making the trip home 2 hours long. You’ve been forewarned in writing about that weekend traffic!
ADVICE: If traffic is heavy, take exit 221 off I-5 North at Highway 534 in Conway to avoid it when entering the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. Then take Fir Island Road to the west and ascend Best Road to reach the tulips.
What types of flowers can be seen at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival? Where can I see all of these flowers in the Skagit Valley?
Obviously, tulips! Otherwise, why are you going to the tulip festival? The majority of the tulip fields around Mount Vernon, Washington, are owned by Roozengarde and Tulip Town. Outside of the actual fields, each company has a display of its own.
Display gardens at Roozengarde are more akin to Keukenhof in the Netherlands. They spend a great deal of time and energy developing their floral arrangements. You’ll find well-kept, orderly-planted, and manicured gardens here. Tulips of various varieties, planted in various patterns around trees, as well as windmills used as decorations, may be seen. In the back of the property, however, there are also the customary rows of tulip fields.
ADVICE: At Roozengarde, pay your admission with cash! You might be able to move through the line more quickly. For the year 2021, all tickets must be ordered online and in advance due to regulations governing public health and safety.
Fun Fact: The crops get rotated annually. Because of this, the tulip fields will be different every year.
The tulip fields in Tulip Town are more open and come in a variety of colours. In addition, they provide tractor van rides, and kids were flying kites on the grassy area. By the entrance, there is a fantastic interior exhibit that details the development of tulip farming in the Netherlands.
The only restrooms available at Roozengarde and Tulip Town are portable toilets. You’ll need to travel into town if you’re looking for genuine restrooms.
Fun Fact: There are many varieties of tulips that are planted each year. Some variations bloom earlier or later than others, depending on when you visit you may be seeing different flowers.
Contrary to popular assumption, the fields don’t only have tulips; some of them also have daffodils. But to do that, you’ll need to go in March, early in the season. Additionally, there is the La Conner Daffodil Festival, which lasts the entire month of March.
The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival’s interactive map of various fields owned by various farmers is one of its outstanding features. You can usually identify which fields are about to bloom, in bloom, or past bloom from the map. The pre- and post-bloom fields are typically portrayed in grey, while the in-bloom fields are typically displayed in colour.
View the Skagit Valley live bloom map in the section below! Daffodils and tulips are both represented by the flower emblems.
PRO TIP: When they are in bloom, you can easily find both types of flowers nearby because the map covers tulip and daffodil fields.
Which tulip fields are the best?
The Noordoostpolder in the Flevoland province is where the majority of tulip farms are found in The Netherlands. Another wonderful place to see these lovely flowers is in the flower bulb fields along the coast from The Hague and Leiden up to Alkmaar in the north. The largest flower show in the world, the Keukenhof, is only 15 minutes from Leiden and 30 minutes from Amsterdam. It is known for its abundance of tulips. The largest flower auction in the world, FloraHolland, is at Aalsmeer, which is only 30 minutes by vehicle from Amsterdam.
What is the best tulip farm?
Holland America Flower Gardens in Woodland is one of the most amazing tulip fields in the United States, and Washington is no exception!
The proprietors of this lovely tulip farm immigrated to the United States from Holland, making them true Tulip specialists.
This is one of the tulip farms in the USA where you can choose your own blooms to take with you, much like Dutch Hollow Farms.
You will receive plenty of advice from the locals, but you are free to choose any blossoms you like. It goes without saying that you will have to pay for what you harvest.
What distinguishes RoozenGaarde from Tulip Town?
While Tulip Town primarily consists of shorter rows of Tulips with various hues, Roozengaarde prefers vast fields with the same colour of Tulips (looks like Rainbow).
How many days are there in the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival?
The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is one of the destination events for the Pacific Northwest, occurring from April 1-30, honouring millions of tulips bursting into bloom. The tulips bloom at their own time during the festival, as with other things controlled by Mother Nature. The tulips give us the chance to introduce the globe to our region and the agriculture of the Skagit Valley.
To administer our office and organise our festival activities, we rely on a large volunteer base.
Due to the lack of people, our festival is planned as a driving tour “a place to enter. Both the festival’s numerous events and activities, as well as the tulip fields, are dispersed throughout the Skagit Valley. Tulip Town and RoozenGaarde/Washington Bulb Co., Inc. grow tulips in the tulip fields. The fields are in various locations every year because of crop rotation. Visitors can admire and take pictures of displays of tulips in gardens at RoozenGaarde and Tulip Town.
We hope you take pleasure in participating in one of the numerous events and activities that take place exclusively in April.
As the event moves forward, we anticipate welcoming visitors from all across the United States and the globe. In a “We happily welcome guests from all 50 states and more than 85 international nations on an annual basis.