Hey y’all, so like, the Tulip Time festival is happening in Pella, and colorful tulips are popping up all over the place. It’s like, a big deal ’cause thousands of peeps are gonna show up for this annual event. This year is extra special ’cause it’s the 90th anniversary of the whole Dutch celebration in this town, and also the 40th birthday of the Thistles Flower Market in Pella’s town square.
The owner of the store, Alie Muller-Heit, is like super into tulips and this festival. She’s been obsessed with them since she was a little kid. Her family has been all about Tulip Time for ages, doing stuff with her grandparents and parents and hosting tours in the community.
This year, the flower market is doing something cool for visitors. They’re giving out blooming tulips with bulbs in clear plastic gift bags. They got 5,500 tulips grown by a local farm, Nunnikhoven Farm, in Marion County. The tulip is like attached to the bulb, and you gotta wait for the tulip to die off so you can use the bulb in the next season.
Oh, and the store has a new website, PellaTulipBulbs.com, where you can buy 70 different types of tulip bulbs from the Netherlands. They even have two rare varieties in limited quantities — the Giant Orange Sunrise and the Nightmare tulip. The Giant Orange Sunrise is like, huge, and the Nightmare starts purple but turns black. Super cool, right?
You can buy the rare bulbs individually, but everything else is sold in packs of 50. And the flower market is offering free classes on how to take care of tulips ’cause apparently, it’s not as easy as it looks. You gotta put ’em in sandy soil and choose the right varieties based on when you want the blooms.
Tulip Time is gonna be lit from Thursday to Saturday, so don’t miss out on all the flowery fun!
