Stop and smell the flowers at Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Kids splashed through muddy puddles in their rain boots, families stopped to smell the flowers, and friends posed for photos among vast blankets of tulips and daffodils – just another morning at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.

Each year, more than half a million flower lovers travel from far and wide to see North America’s largest tulip festival in Mount Vernon.

The festival’s largest garden, Roozengaarde, features more than 200 varieties of tulips and daffodils and spans 50 acres. The team plants about 1 million bulbs by hand and tens of millions by machine, garden manager Brent Roozen said.

Roozengaarde’s history dates back centuries. Roozen’s family had been planting bulbs since the 1700s in Holland. In 1947, his grandfather, unsatisfied with his role in the family business as the youngest of three brothers, hopped on a boat with Roozen’s grandmother to the United States. After five years of working for another farmer, he saved enough money to buy 5 acres of land and start his own farm.

“Ten kids, 36 grandkids and 75 years later, here’s where we are right now,” Roozen said.

Roozengaarde had its first bloom in 1985. Even after 40 years, no year at the garden is quite the same.

“We’re always trying new designs because we always want to make it better than the previous year,” Roozen said. “Sometimes our designs don’t work out how we had in mind, or what what we thought, but the end result is always super colorful, and it looks great.”

That’s enough to keep people coming back for more. Kirsten Frostad, her 7-year-old twin sons and her father, Brad Becker, have attended the festival for six years in a row.

“It’s just so peaceful here being among all the tulips and the daffodils,” Frostad said. “It’s a fun place to spend time with my dad and the boys.”

But Roozengaarde isn’t the only part of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The festival has four additional gardens around the valley, ranging from 3 to 20 acres. Ticket prices range from $10 to $20. The festival partners with local businesses for community events throughout the month of April.

“Come for the tulips, stay for the food, stay for the beer, stay for the small towns,” festival director Nicole Roozen said, “those unique things that make Skagit County so beautiful.”

Last year, the festival generated an estimated $83 million in revenue in Skagit County, she said, which helps local businesses during what would otherwise be a slower time of year.

Lauri Ledbetter and Genie Hallman traveled from Spokane to see the tulips and check an item off their bucket list.

“It’s amazing that there’s so many different varieties of flowers, all unique,” Ledbetter said. “It feels good to be out in nature where it’s warm enough to be outside.”

While the festival lasts through the month of April, the gardens are open all year. This year, the tulips are blooming according to schedule. The next two weeks, through the end of April, will likely be the most colorful, Brent Roozen said.

“Spring is my favorite time, and these are the first flowers you see,” Hallman said. “It’s pretty and makes a good day.”

To avoid crowds, Roozen suggests visitors come during the week or days when rain is only forecasted for an hour or two. Bloom updates are available on the festival’s website as well as its Instagram and Facebook pages.

“It’s just really neat for me to see how our community can come together and unite around something like this,” Nicole Roozen said.

Tulip To-Dos

• Tulip Festival Street Fair, April 18 to 20, Downtown Mount Vernon

• Tulip Festival Original Art Exhibit, April 18 to 25, Depot Arts Center, Anacortes

• Kiwanis Salmon Barbeque, every Friday, Saturday and Sunday to May 4, Hillcrest Lodge