Skagit Valley tulip fields in April
— — the week the valley turns into stripes of colour.
Not only on a wall.
“For most of April the Skagit Valley north of Seattle runs in long bands of red, pink, yellow, and white. The fields are commercial bulb stock, planted by the same families that have grown tulips in the valley since the 1940s, with the Cascade foothills behind them and Mount Baker visible to the north on a clear day. The festival runs the whole month; bloom peak shifts year to year. Most fields are private working farmland, edged by gravel roads that fill with cars by late morning. from the studio
Skagit Valley tulip fields in April, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The tulip fields lie in the Skagit Valley of northwest Washington, roughly an hour north of Seattle and roughly an hour south of the Canadian border. The valley floor is rich alluvial farmland built by the Skagit River and sheltered by the Cascade Range to the east and the Olympics across Puget Sound to the west. Commercial bulb growing took hold in the 1940s and the valley is now one of the largest producers of tulip, daffodil, and iris bulbs in the United States. Most fields concentrate west of Interstate 5 around Mount Vernon, Conway, and La Conner in Skagit County.
The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival runs the full month of April, opening April 1 and closing April 30 regardless of bloom, with peak typically falling somewhere in the middle two weeks. The exact peak shifts year to year by as much as two weeks based on winter and early-spring temperatures. The fields are commercial cut and bulb stock, so blooms are topped once a field peaks; the colour map moves through the valley as the harvest moves. The festival board publishes a daily bloom status with field locations and percentage open.
The two main public display gardens are RoozenGaarde on Beaver Marsh Road and Tulip Town on Bradshaw Road, both west of Mount Vernon. Both charge admission, both offer parking and walking paths through planted display beds, and both fill on weekend midday. Working fields along the surrounding roads are private; the courtesy is to stay on the shoulder and out of the rows. Weekend traffic on La Conner Whitney Road and Best Road runs slow from mid-morning on. An early start in soft light, on a weekday if possible, is the simpler day.