MOUNT VERNON — Tulip Valley Farms is looking forward to giving new experiences this year to those attending the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.
Andrew Miller, co-founder of the first-year tulip farm west of Mount Vernon, said staff are working on ways to keep potential festivalgoers from using the word “but.”
For example, he said he has heard people say they would like to attend the festival, “but” they don’t want to deal with the traffic.
To ease this stressor Tulip Valley Farm’s location on Bradshaw Road will have seven acres of parking.
Miller has also planned various events and experiences in order to get people out to the fields, including Tea Time in the Tulips, U-pick and Night Bloom.
“We could have no flowers and people would still come out and have a good time,” Miller said.
The farm has hazelnut trees and grass planted between rows of tulips, helping to create a more unique experience as well as soak up excess water should the weather not cooperate.
Miller said his goal is to have 100,000 people visit his tulip fields this year. He admits it’s a lofty goal for a new farm.
“For a new farm that number would be unprecedented,” Miller said. “But that’s just how we are.”
While the weather has been cold, he said Tulip Valley Farms will be ready for the April 1 start of tulip season. The tulip plants are looking mostly healthy because the cold weather has kept disease from setting in. “We will be ready by the first of April. Mother Nature will decide how much color we have by the first of April,” Miller said.
While the tulip plants are looking healthy, the farm’s first season has not been without its problems, which have included pesky rabbits that like to munch on tulip bulbs and sprouts.
“You do the best you can with what you have,” Miller said. “We have just shy of one million bulbs, they can’t eat them all.”
The Tulip Valley Farms team is also trying to modernize its portion of the Tulip Festival by creating an app where attendees can buy tickets, check out events and plan a whole trip involving local hot spots.
The hope is that people can use the app to find places to eat or visit when they’re not in the tulip fields, and that this will create more revenue for other businesses in the county.
Those using the app can also earn points from other businesses. The points can be redeemed for Tulip Valley Farms merchandise.
“It’s going to enhance the community’s experience,” Miller said. “That can be the difference (for a business) between getting by and doing well.”
Miller is asking other wholesale tulip growers to come to him before going to markets in Seattle because he expects the demand for bouquets to be higher than he can meet on his own.
Tulip Valley Farms is creating a year of firsts for the local tulip industry, and like everything else Miller said this is intentional.
“The stuff that sticks we will scale and the stuff that doesn’t we may not bring back,” he said.
