It is tulip season in the Pacific Northwest. I love tulips and the years we make it out to the tulip fields are my favorites! We don’t go every year but we try to go at least every other. We have been to RoozenGaarde and Tulip Town and both are great. We try to switch it up since they have very different styles. For 2023 we went to RoozenGaarde and it was beautiful! We went super early on a Sunday morning and the crowds were not bad at all. It was raining most of the long drive up but once we got there the rain stopped.
We didn’t go quite early enough to get the gardens to ourselves but it was pretty empty when we got there just after opening on a cloudy Sunday morning. Cloudy days are the best for taking photographs because of the way the light bounces off of the tulips. I always get the best pictures on cloudy days.
I loved the combinations of purple hyacinths and red tulips. They were very beautiful together!
The pink and white tulips were some of my favorites!
These purple and yellow ones were not quite open yet but I took a picture of them so that I could remember which ones I like in case I am ever brave enough to plant tulips again. I am going to have to take some serious pest control measures because the moles ate all of my bulbs from underground. It was very disappointing!
I thought these raggedy looking pink ones were beautiful as well. They also were not quite open but I loved how the water drops looked on the petals so I took a picture anyway.
I am not always a huge fan of daffodils but these apricot an cream ones were so stunning! I may try to grow more daffodils next fall since the squirrels and the moles tend to leave these alone more.
My kids called these daffodils “egg flowers” because they looked very much like an egg. These were also some of my favorite flowers I saw that day.
I tried to get a good picture of these flowers but it was slightly windy and there wasn’t a lot of room to get a good angle. I am not sure what these were called but they looked like upside-down tulips. We all loved these ones!
It isn’t a trip to the tulip fields without the obligatory picture taken across seemingly endless fields of blooms. I wasn’t able to recreate my purple tulip photo but I did get some great pictures of the reds and yellows that made up most of the fields.
There were only a few rows of the purple tulips this year but they were still stunning.
Surprise alpacas! We took a break from walking to watch these alpacas eat. They were super cute!
My favorite tulips this year were these red ones that almost glowed in the light. This photo hasn’t been edited at all and it really shows how bright the tulips were under the overcast sky.
We had a great time at RoozenGaarde this year. I saw a lot of tulips I have not seen before, or don’t remember, and it wasn’t too cold for us. We just made sure to wear our rain boots since the fields can be muddy. I did buy one bouquet of some deep red tulips for my mom but otherwise we didn’t spend much more than the admission tickets. Parking was free with our ticket.
I should also probably note that this year there is a new farm called Tulip Valley Farms which we have not been to. If you are local you might have heard about some of the controversy around Tulip Valley Farms versus Tulip Town. I won’t go into detail here because I am no expert but basically the person who started Tulip Valley Farms used to be one of the owners of Tulip Town and there is now a lawsuit going on around it. I did link their website below if you want to check it out.
Thanks for reading about our trip to the tulip fields this year! Each field has different pricing and policies for dogs, parking and drones so be sure to click the links below if you want more information on that. RoozenGaarde was open the earliest in the morning which is why we chose it. We are all early risers and we had afternoon plans so we had to be home by a certain time. Also look out for another shop update at Oscoey Shop in time for Mother’s Day with tulip stickers, postcards and a new mini tulip field cross stitch pattern!
Links:
