Tulip Festival in Mt. Vernon

I had the sheer luck of finding myself at a housesit (affiliate link, btw) in Mt. Vernon, Washington during Tulip Festival season this April. As it turns out, Mt. Vernon is ground-zero for the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival!

Lasting the entire month of April, the Tulip Festival showcases an amazing variety of blooms at local tulip farms. You can drive around and kinda see fields of tulips and daffodils from the road, but to really see anything, you need to pay to go into one of four “display gardens.”

Overall Tips for the Tulip Festival

All four Tulip Festival gardens, and all the other spring flower fields, lie between Mt. Vernon and La Connor. It’s a grid of just a few streets, and it gets super crowded, especially on the weekends. If it’s at all possible, visit on a weekday, and even then, go first thing in the morning or in the two hours before closing time.

I visited once on a Tuesday afternoon, and while it was crowded, it was manageable. I went again first thing in the morning on a Friday and crowds were thinner. But by the time I left an hour and a half later, huge buses had arrived, disgorging tons of tulip seekers. On a Saturday, it took me an extra 45 minutes just to drive through the area on my way to La Connor. It’s definitely worth seeing, but if you’re driving in from out of town with plans to arrive in the middle of the day on a Saturday, I feel for you. Because it’s going to be unpleasant.

Also, keep in mind that each ticketed garden costs $15 per person, or more. So if you’re really trying to see everything, it can get very expensive very quickly.

Roozengaarde

By far and away, the best tulip garden to visit is Roozengaarde. Most of the traffic is going to be headed to Roozengaarde. It is just jaw-droppingly fantastic. All four farms have large, free parking lots and Roozengaarde is no exception. Nearest to the parking lot is a permanent gift shop building with lots of cute gardening-themed knick-knacks. Beyond that, holy cow, there are over 50 acres of wide, saturated rows of tulips in all colors. It’s like a quilt, or an ocean of pure color. Now, depending on when you go and the growing season, all the tulips may not have bloomed. In 2023, the season was a little later, so the best color was toward the end of the month.

Between the gift shop building and the tulip fields are five acres of formal display gardens. While the tulip fields are all “regular” tulips, the display gardens showcase all manner of specialized tulips. Exotic colors and frilly edges, tulips so petal-filled that they look like peonies, all mixed in with other flowers. One area has rivers of blue hyacinths, interspersed with other fragrant flowers. Other areas feature shapes, like hearts or triangle patterns. A focal point of the entire garden is a large Dutch-style windmill, at which folks line up for pictures.

A field edged with rivers of flowers holds a second, larger gift shop in a tent, with more Tulip Festival-specific merchandise and bouquets of tulips to take home. To the right of the entrance is a snack shack, with fudge, kettle corn, hot dogs, hamburgers, and drinks. A field behind the shack holds picnic tables, some under a canopy. Behind that whole area are even more tulips, and a whole corner featuring every type of daffodil that you could ever imagine, and several that you never could. They are fantastic! From your basic yellow teacup to frilly peach-and-white concoctions.

Admission

The entrance price for Roozengaarde in 2023 was $15. The fields and display gardens are only open in April, so the price may go up a bit every year. Just keep that in mind. Otherwise, aside from any gift, flower, or food purchases you may make, that’s pretty much the extent of the offerings at Roozengaarde. It’s there to be seen and enjoyed and that’s enough. You’ll see later that other farms cost more and have additional “attractions.” But Roozengaarde doesn’t need it. Here, the tulips speak proudly for themselves.

Lest you think April is the only time these farms make any money, know that their primary product is tulip bulbs. Once the blooms die off, they dig up the bulbs and sell them for the rest of the year. It just so happens that they let them bloom first and they let the public pay to come see it. In fact, Roozengaarde is open year-round, if only to picnic on the grounds and shop in the store.

Tulip Town

I went to Roozengaarde twice during my stay in Mt. Vernon, I liked it so much. But I thought I should try at least one other garden to see what else is out there. I ended up at what looks like the second-biggest tulip farm in the area, Tulip Town. After Roozengaarde, Tulip Town is a bit of a letdown. Plus, it’s $2 more expensive! But it has its strong points too.

The tulip field is much smaller, with thinner rows, and a lot more that wasn’t blooming. The paths around and through the flowers are more difficult to navigate. It feels much more like a working farm (even though Roozengaarde is too.) There’s a platform at one end to give you an elevated view of the field. (Unfortunately, the tulips weren’t blooming at that end yet.) A central plaza has the prerequisite windmill, plus some water features, more formal garden beds, and some German-sounding music playing over loudspeakers.

Where Tulip Town shines a bit brighter is #1 – a free tractor ride around the field, departing every 15 minutes. And #2 – a large tent with shopping and dining opportunities. In the tent, there’s a Tulip Festival store, a bar and coffee shop/cafe, and a pretty merchandise shop with lots of fun spring items. Farther back in the tent is a huge mural and a tulip shop way in the back. The food looks a lot better at Tulip Town, and I can say from personal experience that the kettle corn is better at Tulip Town than at Roozengaarde. They also sell fresh mini donuts from a food truck in an outdoor beer garden.

Admission

Unfortunately, Tulip Town overall offers substantially fewer tulips, AND it charges more for them too! It’s $17 per person, but you can buy online for $2 off. You can also opt for a much more expensive guided tour which includes a U-pick bouquet to take home, I believe.

So the bottom line for Tulip Town is fewer tulips, better food.

Tulip Valley & Garden Rosalyn

I didn’t visit the remaining tulip gardens, and from the looks of their parking lots, neither did anyone else. Tulip Valley seems to have two sites, a U-pick garden and a farm with lots of animals, and from the reviews, it sounds like you need to have a ticket for both. They claim up to 10 miles of “tulip trails”, which I take to mean you can get in between the rows. But they also seem to have trees planted among the rows, which makes it a bit less picturesque. But Tulip Valley is the only one that offers a “night bloom” evening event with laser lights and projections.

Garden Rosalyn seems to be fairly new and is just a garden without any tulip fields. There’s a pond with some geese and several flower beds with tulips laid out in various shapes. In reviews, most people seem disappointed to pay $15 for a scant 20 minutes experience, but I think they plan to expand year after year. (Though, if it were me, I’d charge less to get people in the door.)

Tulip Festival Street Fair

There are events all month long during the Tulip Festival, maybe most notably, the Tulip Parade in La Conner near the beginning of the month, and the Mt. Vernon Street Fair near the end. I went to the Mt. Vernon Street Fair and had a great time – the length of first street downtown is crowded with stalls from all kinds of artists and food booths. Jewelry, candles, toffee, art – nearly everything you could imagine. As well as several places selling huge bouquets of tulips.

Several downtown businesses get in on the act as well. I visited the historic Lincoln Theater as part of an open house and enjoyed a hand pie from Shambala Ancient Grain Bakery. And street fair or no, everyone should visit the Skagit Valley Food Co-Op for a meal or just ice cream.

There’s lots of parking on the streets off 1st street, particularly in parking lots along the river. Even so, it may be hard to find a spot if you go to the street fair on Saturday afternoon.

Planning

There’s certainly more to the Mt. Vernon Tulip Festival – official chocolates, beer, and soap; pickleball tournaments and choir concerts; chili cooks-offs, and the like. But the four tulip farms, and mainly Roozengaarde, is the crux of the whole endeavor. For all the information and some planning tools, including maps, you can visit the Tulip Festival website or stop by the festival office in downtown Mt. Vernon.

I happened upon Roosengaarde first while just driving around and getting the lay of the land. But I made specific plans to visit Roozengaarde first thing on Friday morning, followed by Tulip Town, followed by lunch & shopping at the street fair. All in hopes of dodging the weekend crowds. And it seemed to work out pretty well. I felt like I was ahead of the crowd in the gardens and found a parking spot pretty easily for the street fair. In any case, it pays to get there early, wherever you plan to be. Beacuse Tulip Festival = CROWDS.