(Radio Iowa) – The annual Pella Tulip Festival opens today (Thursday) and you’ll need to spend some time looking for the headliner flowers. Jessi Galligan is the executive director of the Pella Historical Society. “I won’t lie to you. When you come to Pella and you look for tulips, you’re going to have to squint a little harder to find them because a lot have unfortunately been done blooming now,” she says.
Galligan says they plant the tulips to come out at different times, but a span of warm weather made them bloom.
“It was really that, you know, hot week or two in early mid-April that just, yeah, just made that bloom life happen really quickly. So there’s a lot of stems in Pella,” Galligan says. Galligan says you can find some tulips still in bloom with a little effort. She says the overall underlying reason for the festival never goes away.
“It is about the heritage. You know, Pella being founded by Dutch immigrants in 1847, this is the way that we can still honor our Dutch ancestry and our Dutch heritage,” Galligan says. “Whether you actually do have that Dutch ancestry or not, you know, when you’re in Pella during Tulip time, you’re sort of Dutch for the day, and we love to celebrate that culture.” Galligan says that culture is on display through the festival.
“You’ll see, you know, hundreds if not thousands of people wearing these beautiful Dutch costumes, recognizing our heritage there. Every day of Tulip Time, we have two parades full of floats and marching bands, kids marching,” she says. “It’s just a real celebration of our town all wrapped up into one parade. Dutch dancing, pop-up performances throughout the festival grounds. And when I say festival grounds, it’s really just our downtown.” On top of that there’s the Dutch letters, ring bologna and many other special foods.
“So much good food during tulip time and a lot of things that you can only get during tulip time. So it’s sort of the one time of year that you can get some of these delicious treats,” she says. The Pella Tulip Festival runs through Saturday.
Find the full schedule of events at www.pellahistorical.org.
