HOLLAND, Mich. — An early wave of blooms across Holland is raising questions about what visitors can expect for this year’s Tulip Time Festival, but city officials and growers say the flowers will be in full color for the event.
“You could come now to the city and see all sorts of color,” said Holland Parks and Recreation Director Andy Kenyon. “And you can come in about 11 days from now, when the festival starts. We’ll have color then.”
The city planted just under 800,000 tulips at properties including Centennial Park, Windmill Island Gardens, Window on the Waterfront, downtown streets, and the tulip lanes.
“There’s more than a million tulips, way more than a million that get planted throughout the whole city on private property and other places,” Kenyon said.
At Veldheer Tulip Gardens, a family-owned farm, the blooms are even more abundant — about 6.5 million. Recent warm, sunny days prompted an early wave of blooms.
“We had a couple days last week where it was high 70s, low 80s, which definitely gave them a little scare, thinking they were late. So they had to start blooming a lot quicker,” said third-generation owner, Jacob Veldheer.
While the warmer temperatures sped up some blooms, Kenyon said cooler nights are helping extend the display.
“Having a little bit colder weather is actually wonderful for the tulips. They really like that,” Kenyon said. “Window on the Waterfront has opened up quite a bit due to the sun, and the colder weather makes those bulbs close back up again. So we get a few more days of color out of that.”
That mix of blooms means some tulips are already open while others remain in buds, setting the stage for fresh flowers to open during the festival.
“As long as we don’t get too many chaotic, crazy heat days, we should be good all the way through Tulip Time,” Veldheer said. “We actually have a live camera going at all times. So, if you ever do question it, you can hop on either our website or our Facebook page and see exactly what you’re looking at.”
Kenyon agrees the festival will be colorful from start to finish.
“The tulip lanes in particular are not even quite 50% in bloom,” he said. “Some sections down by Kollen Park, down 12th Street Boulevard, Washington Boulevard, are full of color right now, but they’re still really tight, so we’ve got a long way before those fall apart here in the park.”
And for those who can’t wait for the festival, there is already plenty to see.
“When you plant six, six and a half million of ‘early, mids and lates,’ there’s a lot of color to be seen, especially when we get the heat,” Veldheer said. “The ‘lates’ are normally a good one to hold out to last, so the people that come a little later can still see what they come to see — beautiful tulips and a lot of them.”
This story was initially reported by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
