(Radio Iowa) – Colorful tulips are already starting to bloom in Pella, where thousands of visitors are expected for this week’s annual Tulip Time festival. This marks the 90th year for the celebration of all things Dutch in the south-central Iowa town, and it’s also the 40th anniversary of the Thistles Flower Market on Pella’s town square. The store is owned by Alie Muller-Heit, who’s been fascinated by tulips and this festival since she was a girl. “It’s huge. I mean, just last week, my grandpa pulled out the original Tulip Time brochure from 90 years ago,” Muller-Heit says. “My family has been heavily involved in Pella Tulip Time growing up, doing things with my grandparents and my parents in the community for Tulip Time, and to host tours.”

The flower market is offering something unusual to festival visitors this year, a blooming tulip and bulb in a clear plastic gift bag. “We worked with Nunnikhoven Farm, a local farm in Marion County, and they grew 5,500 tulips,” Muller-Heit says. “The tulip is attached to the bulb. You actually have to have the tulip die off the bulb so that you can make sure that the bulb is usable in the next season, so in the fall.” The store’s also launched a website — PellaTulipBulbs-dot-com — where people can purchase 70 different varieties of tulip bulbs that are sourced from the Netherlands, including two rare varieties in very limited quantities — the Giant Orange Sunrise and the Nightmare tulip.

Photo courtesy of Thistles-Flower-Market.

“The Giant Orange Sunrise is exactly what it sounds like. It is a huge bulb and bloom, maybe larger than the size of even my fist. The Nightmare starts as a deep purple and it actually turns into a pigmentation that is black, so it is the only black tulip,” Muller-Heit says. “We’re selling both of those by the bulb, whereas everything else is sold in quantities of 50.” The flower market is also offering free classes in tulip care, as she there’s a lot of finesse involved in successfully growing tulips from bulbs, year after year. “You want to put it in sandy soil, and then in our master class, we actually talk about the varieties that you might be interested in purchasing, dependent on the looks and the time of season that you want the blooms,” Muller-Heit says. “We also talk about how to arrange them. Tulips are a really unique flower. They continue to grow after cut and they follow where the sunshine is coming in.”

Tulip Time runs Thursday through Saturday.