What do a lawyer, accountant, military intelligence manager, insurance executive and an information tech have in common?
They’re five friends from Mount Vernon (WA) High School Class of 1994 who decided to plunk down $1.5 million to buy a tulip farm (reasonably named Tulip Town) right before the pandemic hit!
[You can visit their website, Tulip Town which opens with a delightful overview video]
The friends decided to name their partnership the Spinach Bus Venture, after the rickety nicknamed “Spinach Bus” they rode during their summer jobs out to the agricultural fields in Skagit County Washington to pick spinach seeds and dig daffodil and tulip bulbs.
But they admit the timing of their purchase could NOT have been worse. Some background will make this clearer.
In Skagit County, about 1,000 acres of farmland are cultivated to grow tulip and daffodil cut flowers, along with annually harvesting over 20 million bulbs for gardeners.
About 500 of those acres are dedicated to tulips, which account for 75% of U.S. commercial production. Additionally, 75 million cut flowers from those fields and greenhouses provide for more than half of all U.S. floral sales. And the bulb industry produces $20 million in annual gross income.
But as impressive as those numbers are, the biggest generator of income for the two tulip farms remaining in Skagit County (Tulip Town with 30 acres and the much larger RoozenGaarde and Washington Bulb Co., with 500 acres of daffodils, 350 acres of tulips and 15 acres of greenhouses) comes from the annual Skagit County Tulip Festival.
It runs for the entire month of April and the paid admission, flowers, bulbs and souvenirs sales account for over 90% of their annual revenues for both Tulip Town and RoozenGaarde.
The Festival attracts over 400,000 visitors annually and pumps almost $65 million into the local economy from restaurants, hotels, etc. So you can imagine the panic the pandemic caused the new entrepreneurs with the cancellation of the 2020 Festival.
And then it was compounded with a dramatic drop in floral gifts given to Mom’s on Mother’s Day, one of the biggest flower-gifting days of the year along with Valentine’s Day, because of the pandemic-induced stay-at-home order. People simply were not going to risk heading out to buy flowers.
But the newbies had one advantage – they weren’t beholding to any “old” way of doing business.
Their first innovation last year was when Festival regulars started calling to say how disappointed they were about missing out on the 2020 celebration – but wondered if they could get some of their flowers anyway.
The previous owners had not focused on shipping actual bouquets, but they did have some boxes stored away. The new crew thought they’d get requests for 100 to 200 boxes of bouquets – but they did that in just their first day of taking orders!
When the season ended, they had boxed and sold over 8,000 bouquets! So a new business line was born.
While the pandemic was raging (thanks to Donnie’s incompetence), American patriots started searching for ways to show their appreciation to frontline workers. The newbies thought people might be happy to send a bouquet of tulips as a donation or statement of support. That’s when their “Color for Courage” came into being – and they took more than 4,700 orders for a $15 bouquet.
Then one of their group thought they could keep in touch with the regular Festivalgoers with a 360-degree app letting them visit the fields that they couldn’t view in person.
All these new ideas kept their heads above water during the pandemic, and they are looking forward to once again welcoming visitors back this spring, although at a reduced capacity with mask and social distancing required.
So from April 1st to the 30th (and maybe into May if the weather holds) there’ll be lots of smiles from taking a tour of Tulip Town. You just won’t be able to see them under the masks!
EPILOGUE
While not wanting to diminish our country’s Tulip Festivals this spring, I think we’d all agree that Holland holds the title for tulips. I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited Amsterdam twice – once in the fall and once in the spring. And their tulip gardens are truly a site to behold! So I’ll close with some of their stupendous displays:
Still, it’s hard to beat a gorgeous floral American sunset in Skagit County … 
7 Responses to “Saturday Smile: Spring Has Sprung”
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Under the wire – but I did make it on Saturday.
When I was doing woodworking projects with my uncle out on the farm, he always said: Make an honest estimate of how long you think the project will take – and then DOUBLE it. You’ll then at least be close to the actual time needed.
I think that’s pretty sage advice for ANY project – essay, book report, thesis, etc. My problem was that at the last minute I decided I wanted to add photos from Holland. Took longer to search, find, edit and put them together then I thought. Should have DOUBLED my estimate!
(All my uncles were very wise men – and I dearly miss all of them.)
Nameless, this is just drop-dead gorgeous. Although irises – particularly bearded irises – are my favorites, I love all bulb/rhizome flowers. These are spectacular.
I’m sure no one who is al all a linguist could n=miss the Dutch connection right in the name of the other grower in the county, RoozenGaarde. That could only be Dutch.
The Spinach Bus Ventures people look like souls as lively as the flowers they grow, and I wish them nothing but the best! And thank you so much! I had just finishing the opera Romeo et Juliette, and this dried the tears right out of my eyes.
WRT RoozenGaarde – of course you’re absolutely correct. It was started by William Roozen, an immigrant from the Netherlands in the 1940s. The current head, Brent Roozen, is a third generation owner.
[NY Times story provided a good deal of my info:]
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/us/coronavirus-tulips-washington-skagit.html
PS: I had a small (~10×10) raised-bed bearded iris garden when I lived in my former home – and the bulbs all came from my “pseudo” Aunt.
While I loved their beauty, what I loved most were all the different fragrances from the different varieties.
After work, I would go out and just sniff the different flowers until I had temporary anosmia. Then I’d look forward to doing it all again the next day when my sense of smell had recovered.
RoozenGaarde (old Dutch spelling) translates into Rose Garden; I suppose they had to work with that if Roozen was their surname and they didn’t want to change it into Tulp (singular) or Tulpen (plural).
Thank you for a lovely and positive article, Nameless, and an extra thank you for the pictures of the Dutch spring exhibitions in the Keukenhof and the Dutch tulip fields flanked by a windmill I saw popping up in between the pictures of the first gallery.
I’m not allowed to import tulip bulbs to Oz, but they wouldn’t grow in this soil and climate anyway. So, no matter where they are taken, pictures of tulip fields in bloom are a sight for sore eyes in these depressing times.
What a fantastic, and wonderful story of these people and their business.
One cannot outmatch the splendor of the flowers either.
Great post, Nameless, Thank you.
p.s. the pictures are so beautiful too.
A marvelous posting, thanks. It had seemed apparent, at first sight, that the other nursery’s name was dutch.
My wife will be going back to N.J. soon, to see her daughter, and some N.J. friends, but will not miss going to the Tulip Festival, in Cream Ridge, N.J.. she attended it last year, w/her daughter, and brought home some Calla Lily rhizomes. She is planning to bring tulip bulbs back, this time.
What a truly lovely story of these five people, The Spinach Bus Venture, who developed such a beautiful blooming business.
Seeing these photos are breathtaking. I would love to be able to visit when they have their Tulip Festival and be able to walk and enjoy seeing it in person.
Amazing the way they setup the various combinations to grow these beautiful displays.
Thank you Nameless for this beautiful post.