| Skagit Valley Tulip Festival | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Date(s) | April 1 – April 30 |
| Frequency | Annual |
| Location(s) | Skagit Valley, Washington, U.S. |
| Inaugurated | 1984 [1] |
| Participants | 1 million+ |
| Website | www |
The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is a tulip festival in the Skagit Valley of Washington state, United States. It is held annually in the spring, April 1 to April 30.
Around 1883, George Gibbs, an immigrant from England, moved to Orcas Island, where he began to grow apples and hazelnuts. Nine years later, he purchased five dollars' worth of flower bulbs to grow, and when he dug them up a couple years later and saw how they had multiplied, realized the potential for bulb-growing in the Puget Sound region. He contacted Dutch growers in Holland to learn about the business, only to find the Dutch to be highly secretive about their commercial practices. However, when he shipped off a few a bulbs to Holland, the impressed Dutch growers traveled to Orcas Island to see for themselves how tulips could grow outside Holland.
In 1899, Gibbs wrote to the United States Department of Agriculture regarding the commercial prospects of bulb-growing in the region, and they took interest. In 1905, they sent Gibbs 15,000 imported bulbs from Holland to grow as an experiment, under a contract. The experiment was so successful that the United States Department of Agriculture established its own 10-acre test garden in 1908 around Bellingham, which proved successful enough for the Bellingham Tulip Festival to begin in 1920 to showcase and celebrate the success of the bulb industry.
The Bellingham Tulip Festival was discontinued in 1930, due to the Great Depression and bulb freezes in 1916, 1925, and 1929 that brought heavy losses to the growers. Subsequently, the growers moved south into Skagit County. [2]
In 1946, William Roozen arrived in the United States, leaving behind a successful bulb-growing business spanning six generations in Holland. After working on several different farms, Roozen started his own in Skagit County in 1950. In 1955, he purchased the Washington Bulb Company, making him the leader among the four flower-growing families in the area, and making the Washington Bulb Company the leading grower of tulip, daffodil, and iris bulbs in North America. [3] The farm operates a public display garden and gift shop called Roozengaarde, [4] which, alongside the DeGoede family's Tulip Town, is a major attraction during the Tulip Festival. [5]
Local tulip growers showcased their bulbs through display gardens for decades prior to the formation of an official festival. The Mount Vernon Chamber of Commerce established the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival as a three-day event in 1984 to add festivities during the bloom month. [6] The event has since grown to a month-long event and coincides with street fairs, art shows and sporting events. [7]
The 2020 festival was cancelled on March 25 due to the coronavirus pandemic, which had affected Skagit County. [8] Festival organizers had initially planned for a smaller event with limited numbers of people allowed at display gardens and later car-only tours, but cancelled after the state government issued a stay-at-home order. [9] Tulip Town, a major festival venue, announced plans to use virtual tours and flower donations for hospital workers to recoup their lost revenue. [10] Several tulip fields were prematurely cut to prevent people from visiting the area. [11]
The festival claims to be Washington's largest, with over one million visitors; [12] at least one news source stated attendance was 350,000 for 2008. [13] Travel + Leisure put the figure at 500,000 in 2003. [14] [15]
The festival was selected as the best street fair in KING-TV's "Best of the Northwest" awards in 2010. [16]
Lisse is a town and municipality in the province of South Holland in the Western Netherlands. The municipality, which lies within the Duin- en Bollenstreek, covers an area of 16.05 km2 (6.20 sq mi) of which 0.36 km2 (0.14 sq mi) is water. Its population was 22,982 in 2021. Located within the municipal boundary is also the community De Engel.
La Conner is a town in Skagit County, Washington, United States with a population of 965 at the 2020 census. It is included in the Mount Vernon–Anacortes, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town hosts several events as part of the annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival held in April.
Tulip mania was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels. The major acceleration started in 1634 and then dramatically collapsed in February 1637. It is generally considered to have been the first recorded speculative bubble or asset bubble in history. In many ways, the tulip mania was more of a then-unknown socio-economic phenomenon than a significant economic crisis. It had no critical influence on the prosperity of the Dutch Republic, which was one of the world's leading economic and financial powers in the 17th century, with the highest per capita income in the world from about 1600 to about 1720. The term tulip mania is now often used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble when asset prices deviate from intrinsic values.
Tulip Time Festival is an annual festival held in Holland, Michigan. Tulip festivals are held in many cities around the United States of America that were founded or largely inhabited by Dutch settlers. It has been held every year in mid-May since 1929 and is currently the longest running tulip festival in the United States. The festival currently runs from the first Saturday in May through the second Sunday.
Tulip festivals are held in several cities around the world, mostly in North America, usually in cities with a Dutch heritage such as Albany, New York, Ottawa, Ontario; Gatineau, Quebec; Montreal, Quebec; Holland, Michigan; Lehi, Utah; Orange City, Iowa; Pella, Iowa; Mount Vernon, Washington; and Woodburn, Oregon, and in other countries such as New Zealand, Australia, India, and England. The tulips are considered a welcome harbinger of spring, and a tulip festival permits residents to see them at their best advantage. The festivals are also popular tourist attractions. The tulips are displayed throughout the cities. In certain years the peak of tulips does not coincide with the actual festival due to climatic conditions.
The Canadian Tulip Festival is a tulip festival held annually each May in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The festival claims to be the world's largest tulip festival, displaying over one million tulips, with attendance of over 650,000 visitors annually. Large displays of tulips are planted throughout the city, the largest of which are often in Commissioners Park on the shores of Dow's Lake, and along the Rideau Canal with 300,000 tulips planted there alone.
The Skagit Valley lies in the northwestern corner of the state of Washington, United States. Its defining feature is the Skagit River, which snakes through local communities which include the seat of Skagit County, Mount Vernon, as well as Sedro-Woolley, Concrete, Lyman-Hamilton, and Burlington.
Keukenhof, also known as the Garden of Europe, is one of the world's largest flower gardens, situated in the municipality of Lisse, in the Netherlands. According to the official website, Keukenhof Park covers an area of 32 hectares and approximately 7 million flower bulbs are planted in the gardens annually. Keukenhof is widely known for its tulips, and it also features numerous other flowers, including hyacinths, daffodils, lilies, roses, carnations and irises.
Floriade is a flower and entertainment festival held annually in Canberra's Commonwealth Park on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. It features extensive displays of flowering bulbs with integrated sculptures and other artistic features. Floriade comes from the Latin word floriat, which means to design with flowers.
The Bellingham Herald is a daily newspaper published in Bellingham, Washington, in the United States. It was founded on March 10, 1890, as The Fairhaven Herald and changed its name after Bellingham was incorporated as a city in 1903. The Bellingham Herald is the largest newspaper in Whatcom County, with a weekday circulation of over 10,957. It employs around 60 people. It is owned by The McClatchy Company.
The Daffodil Festival is a regional festival and royalty leadership program. The Grand Floral Parade is held in Pierce County, Washington every April. It consists of a flower parade and a year-long royalty program to select a festival queen from one of the 24 area high schools. Each year, the Royal Court spend thousands of hours promoting education, community pride and volunteerism in the county. In 2012, the Royal Court was named the "Official Ambassadors of Pierce County" by the County Executive and the Pierce County Council.
The Duin- en Bollenstreek is a region in the Western Netherlands, that features coastal dunes and the cultivation of flower bulbs. Situated at the heart of historical Holland nearby the city of Leiden, South Holland, it is bordered by The Hague to the west and Haarlem to the north. The combination of beaches, flower fields, lakes and history makes this area attractive to tourists.
Tulip breaking virus is one of five plant viruses of the family Potyviridae that cause color-breaking of tulip flowers. These viruses infect plants in only two genera of the family Liliaceae: tulips (Tulipa) and lilies (Lilium).
Tulips are spring-blooming perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes in the Tulipa genus. Their flowers are usually large, showy, and brightly coloured, generally red, orange, pink, yellow, or white. They often have a different coloured blotch at the base of the tepals, internally. Because of a degree of variability within the populations and a long history of cultivation, classification has been complex and controversial. The tulip is a member of the lily family, Liliaceae, along with 14 other genera, where it is most closely related to Amana, Erythronium, and Gagea in the tribe Lilieae.
Bloom Festival is Ireland's largest gardening show. It is a large five-day event, held each year in Phoenix Park, Dublin. It was first held in 2007, and is organised by Bord Bia.
Royal FloraHolland, legally Koninklijke Coöperatieve Bloemenveiling Royal FloraHolland U.A., is a Dutch conglomerate of florists. It is one of the largest auction companies in the world. Royal FloraHolland is headquartered in Aalsmeer, with locations in Naaldwijk, Rijnsburg and Eelde.
TheTesselaar Tulip Festival is held in Silvan, Victoria every spring, displaying more than 120 varieties of tulips are shown on a 55-acre farm. This tulip farm was initiated by a couple of Dutch immigrants, Cees and Johanna Tesselaar. They arrived in Melbourne in 1939 and started to grow tulips, gladioli and daffodils on their land. After purchasing more land in Silvan, they grew more tulip bulbs, which attracted people to stop by on their property and admire their fields. In 1954, the Tesselaars open the farm to the public, with a coin donation for the Australian Red Cross. In 2017, around 900,000 tulip bulbs were planted using modern machinery, and 80,000 bulbs are still planted traditionally by hand. The tulip festival has evolved to include music, food and wine festival to attract more visitors during the spring season.
The Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival is a Tulip festival held in Woodburn, Oregon, United States.
Thomas Davey was a British florist and nurseryman based in Camberwell, Surrey, and later in Chelsea, Middlesex, both now in London, England. The son of a nurseryman of the same name, he was known for his "florists' flowers", the type of flowers traditionally popular with English florists, and specialised in tulips, geraniums, and pinks. He capitalised on a new enthusiasm for tulips and flower-growing at the start of the 19th century in what has been described as a "cult of florists' flowers", giving exhibitions that attracted large crowds and publishing sales catalogues, one of which offered nearly 800 different types of tulip bulbs.
Jack Gunter is an American self-taught artist and gallery owner from Camano Island in the state of Washington. He attended Bowdoin College and the University of New Hampshire.