Tulips are just the beginning in Washington's Skagit Valley

Standing in the family’s display garden at RoozenGaarde, with over one million brilliantly coloured, hand-planted tulips, third-generation Washington State tulip farmer Brent Roozen notes the irony of the family name.

The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, now in its 41st year, is considered to be one of the largest tulip festivals in the U.S. It typically starts April 1 and ends April 30, but Roozen notes it continues as long as the tulip blooms last. Roozen’s father Leo also spent a lifetime tulip farming, in the family-run Washington Bulb Co., which became the largest tulip-bulb grower in Washington.

The display garden, which undergoes a redesign yearly, has now grown to more than three hectares, creating one of the most gorgeous displays of tulips in the Skagit Valley, set against the Cascade Mountain range. Each year, in order to keep the soil healthy, she explains the display garden is moved to different areas of the farm.

The gardens charge a fee, ranging from $15 to $20, for visitors during the festival who come in droves each spring to snap photos and take home tulip bunches. Two of the four tulip gardens allow dogs — Tulip Town and Tulip Valley Farms. Pivarnik says many tourists will travel around the peninsula to enjoy its many hiking trails, especially those in the Olympic National Park, which encompasses nearly 404,000 hectares and more than 112 kilometres of wild coastline.

My next stop was the creative waterfront community of Anacortes, on Fidalgo Island, where I explored local shops and met with some of the city’s creative business owners like Kristi Lacey and Kali Berg who own Ink + Wool. The two women initially sold their products at the local farmer’s markets before getting into a historic building downtown.

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