Spring Tulips in the Pacific Northwest

It's mid-April and it's prime tulip bloom season here in Oregon. We had a week or more of warm sunny weather, so this pushed blooms on a bit earlier and may make them finish up a little sooner than they normally would; nonetheless tulips have been putting on quite a show.

I hit Woodburn, Oregon this last weekend to visit the Wooden Shoe Farm Tulip Festival. As I will be living out in a rural area of Oregon not far from this farm, it was a lovely drive down in to the Willamette Valley area, which is dominated by plant growing nurseries. So I was happy to get an introduction to all of these businesses along the way.

Now, having grown up overseas I've had the privilege of visiting the massive tulip fields in Holland, which are quite the thing. While this planting isn't quite to scale with Dutch plantings, it's quite lovely and impressive and worth a visit. While we ended up with a cold raining morning for our visit, the grey skies allowed the flower colors to pop for pictures. (It can often be tough to get good flower photos when conditions are sunny).

It took me a minute to figure exactly what this tulip farm offers, and as it turns out most of their business is in offering cut tulips and selling cut and potted tulips at the farm. The spring tulip festival and events such as weddings seem to be the main focus of the operation.

Tulip Types

Most of the cultivars they have growing on display are industry standards. I've used most of them in my years of work designing massive tulip displays for the Dallas Arboretum, plant trials, and of course choosing the best selections for the clients I had in Texas. Most of the cultivars growing at Wood Shoe Tulip farm work equally well planted in more southern hot climates. Single lates, Darwin Hybrids, and lily-flowering amongst the strongest types. The earlies, dwarfs, mid-season, and peony flowering look to perform better here in cooler weather than in the south as they are a bit more temperature sensitive.

A few of my very favorite sing lates were in good form, 'Maureen' (white), 'Dordogne'(orange/pink/peach multi-colored), and 'Negrita' (Dark purple)

I was, however, happy and surprised to find amongst all the old favorites a couple of cultivars I'm not familiar with. They just happened to be in my favorite flower colors, both orange and green! 'Orange Marmalade' and 'Green Power'. Tulips with green flower petals, or partially green, typically fall into the viridiflora tulip category. Definitely adding these to my new garden...

I don't have room here to post all the fabulous photos of my favorite cultivars, but I'll leave you with two more that I love, the weeping and perfectly named 'Purple Rain' and 'Charming Beauty'. I've a penchant for double peachy anything so if they'd actually had any 'Charming Beauty' for sale, I'd have bought them up!

Lift & Store the Tulip Bulbs

To keep bulbs from splitting to multiply (tulips bulbs will split, producing baby bulbs, also called offsets) - which results in crowding over time and several years of delay for the tiny new bulbs to start blooming -the farm lifts the bulbs after blooming season to store them, then replants them in the fall. That way they get nice big single bloom stems per bulb each spring. So yes, if you're growing tulips for cut flowers, this is common practice for field grow bulbs.

I hope you're enjoying your spring wherever you are and have enjoyed a glimpse of tulip season up here in Oregon!