This weekend is your last chance to stop by Vancouver’s largest and favourite tulip festival.
The 2022 Chilliwack Tulip Festival is set to close for the season after this weekend; your last day to pop in is Sunday, May 1st.
The Tulip Festival is the perfect goodbye to winter and hello to spring and summer weather. The acres of vibrant colours and the smell of flowers will put you in a magical, spring-tide trance.
Walkthrough 26 acres of flowers and see tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils. The festival features 10 varieties of hyacinths and 16 varieties of peony-like daffodils and the star of the show: over 8.5 million tulips in more than 30 different varieties.
The Tulip Festival replicates a Dutch countryside within the Fraser Valley, even going to the extent of adding in windmills and old Dutch bikes to enhance the photo opportunities and transport you further into the Netherlands.
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If you’re an early bird, you can enter the festival as early as 6 am this weekend before the big crowds roll in. Take some adorable sun-rise photos and then head home for a nap before continuing the rest of your day. Early mornings not your thing? Don’t worry, they’re not mine either. The latest entry into the festival is 6 pm and you’re permitted onto the field until 7:30.
Visitors are suggested to wear Vancouver-weather appropriate clothes: rainboots, jackets, layers, and maybe bring an umbrella. Looking at the weather this weekend, I do recommend dressing rain-appropriate. The field is outdoors so it does get kind of messy when it rains. The festival does have covered areas in case you want to get out of the rain. Pets are also welcomed at the festival, as long as they are on a leash.
After walking through the field and admiring the beautiful flowers, stop by The Farm Shop and try some yummy Dutch foods like Dutch Stroop Waffles. Grab some tulip-themed souvenirs, or even fresh-cut or potted tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths. If you’re still hungry after visiting the shop, check out one of the three food trucks there this weekend: Shawarma Time, Dutchlicious, and Barking Irons Roastery.
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The Tulips of the Valley Festival started in 2006 on an Indigenous reserve in Agassiz and has now relocated to Chilliwack and expanded its land.
During its first decade in Agassiz, the Tulip Festival worked with the Seabird Island Band to honour Indigenous culture. The Festival sold bannock and had Indigenous dancers, drummers, and artisans. The festival went from bringing in hundreds of local visitors to thousands of people from across Canada, some even come visit from across the world.
If you didn’t get a chance to see the tulips this season and can’t make it out this weekend, be sure to clear one day this summer to see the Chilliwack Sunflower Festival.