The first ever Harrison Tulip Festival will soon bloom, bringing the biggest and most beautiful bounty of bulbs to the Fraser Valley.
If you have explored the brilliance of the Chilliwack Tulip Festival and Tulips of the Valley in the past, the organizers of those festivals, the Onos Family, launches the new Harrison Tulip Festival. As soon as this spring’s weather allows, blooms will be sprouting from the fertile ground of Agassiz, near Harrison Hot Springs. Depending on the bloom cycle this year, likely beginning in April, the Festival will run approximately four weeks, giving visitors plenty to time to capture memories and the ever changing array of spring colours as they tiptoe through the tulips.
“Flower Festival Queen” Kate Onos-Gilbert and her family pioneered floral agritourism in the Fraser Valley in 2006 when they launched Tulips of the Valley on Seabird Island just east of Agassiz. After 10 highly successful years there, they shifted the festival to Chilliwack, on leased land, where the Chilliwack Tulip Festival first bloomed in 2017 and the Chilliwack Sunflower Festival in 2018. Since then, the family has acquired its own farmland in Agassiz, in the Harrison River Valley, “returning to our roots where the flower magic first bloomed,” says Onos-Gilbert. Flower enthusiasts flocked to the stunning new location last summer, for the Harrison Sunflower Festival.
The “inaugural” Harrison Tulip Festival returns the event to its roots for the Onos Family’s 18th annual tulip festival. The province’s most colourful spring celebration promises 35 acres to explore with 10 million tulip, double daffodil and hyacinth bulbs planted, including more than 50 tulip varieties, 15 double daffodil varieties, and a dozen varieties of hyacinths. A spectacular two-acre show garden features mature fruit and nut trees, flowering shrubs and grassy pathways brightened by thousands of tulips, hyacinths, and fritillaria, a new bloom that promises to be the debuting belle of this year’s festival. All of this brilliance features Mount Cheam providing a breathtaking backdrop for visitor’s photos.
Once again, visitors will be able to create stunning portraits throughout the acreage, with photo opportunities that include swing sets, antique tractors and horse carts, vintage bicycles, a 1950s convertible, a 1965 Airstream trailer, plus raised platforms that make staging photos easy.
To help with the appetite built by walking around the rows of blossoms, two food trucks will be onsite daily, with food for purchase, including authentic Dutch stroopwafels bringing the tulips’ homeland to hand. Stop by the farm store to purchase other refreshments, souvenirs, as well as fresh cut and potted flowers to take memories of the Harrison Tulip Festival home with you. The Harrison Tulip Festival welcomes visitors to 5039 Lougheed Highway, Agassiz, BC, near Harrison Hot Springs. Opening with the Spring bloom (likely) in April, exact dates to be announced closer to opening day, visit harrisontulipfest.com to keep up to date.