Wildflower super bloom Paradise July
— — the week the meadow turns every colour at once.
Not only on a wall.
“Paradise sits at 5,400 feet on Mount Rainier's south side. For about three weeks in July the snowmelt line walks uphill and the subalpine meadows fire off avalanche lilies, lupine, magenta paintbrush, and bistort in overlapping waves. The peak window shifts a week or two with the snowpack. Rangers ask visitors to stay on the paved Skyline trail; one footstep off-trail kills a flower that took years to come back. — from the studio.
Wildflower super bloom Paradise July, 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.
Paradise is the high-use southern entrance to Mount Rainier National Park, at 5,400 feet on the volcano's south flank. The Henry M. Jackson Visitor Center and the historic Paradise Inn sit at the trailhead. Above them, the Skyline, Alta Vista, and Nisqually Vista trails climb through subalpine meadow toward the Nisqually Glacier overlook. The park was established in 1899, the fifth in the national system. The name was given in 1885 by Virinda Longmire, who said of the meadow, 'Oh, what a paradise.'
The bloom follows the snow line. In an average year the lower Paradise meadows clear by early July and the upper meadows by late July; in heavy snow years the peak slides into early August. Avalanche lilies appear first at the snow edge, then broadleaf lupine and magenta paintbrush fill in, with bistort, Sitka valerian, and subalpine aster carrying the meadow into early September. The Park Service posts a weekly bloom report through the season. The window for full meadow colour at Paradise is about three weeks.
Paradise is reached by State Route 706 from the Nisqually Entrance. Timed-entry reservations have been required for the Paradise Corridor on summer weekends in recent seasons; check the park site for current dates. Parking lots fill by 9 a.m. on a clear July Saturday. The 5.5-mile Skyline Loop is the classic walk through peak bloom; the shorter Nisqually Vista loop is about 1.2 miles. Stay on pavement and boardwalk; the meadow's recovery from a single off-trail footprint is measured in years at this elevation.