Warm weather means P.E.I.'s Belfast Tulips are blooming earlier than usual

Ryan McKellop · CBC News

· Posted: May 13, 2025 9:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Belfast Tulips is getting acceptable to unfastened a week sooner than expected aft an aboriginal outpouring led to its archetypal tulips being acceptable to bloom.

The U-pick tulip tract successful eastbound P.E.I. that has go known arsenic a seasonal photographer's eden is acceptable to unfastened to visitors this Friday, seven days earlier its antecedently planned opening day of May 23.  

Trisha Viaene, who does the marketing for the family-owned operation, said she's looking guardant to their 5th play kicking disconnected connected the agelong weekend.

"It's bigger and we get amended each year," she told CBC News.

Belfast Tulips started successful 2020 with 2 acres of U-pick flowers grown from bulbs, and this twelvemonth they've expanded to 4 and a fractional acres, located betwixt Lower Newtown and Eldon successful southeastern P.E.I. 

Viaene said determination are 3 increasing stages successful tulips, and picking them earlier in the blooming play has its advantages.

"You got buds, you got aboriginal flower, past you got the afloat bloom, truthful we're seeing buds with a small spot of aboriginal flowers coming successful now," she said.

"There's a batch of advantages. One is, like, you get the archetypal prime of the crop, and... they're going to past you a agelong time."

Rotating them done the fridge

She said past patrons person immoderate tricks for extending their chopped tulips' lives.

"They'll permission them successful the fridge, truthful they're capable to really bask their tulips for a overmuch longer play of time. We did person idiosyncratic archer america earlier that they had their tulips past similar a period and a half, by benignant of conscionable rotating retired their bunches, truthful that's a large bonus [for] coming now."

The U-pick tulips are sold by the bucket, with each bucket provided to pickers holding up to 100 stems for radical to interruption down into smaller arrangements for antithetic rooms oregon for sharing.

As for colours, Viaene said they person "the full rainbow" crossed each of their fields — almost.

"You're going to spot everything there except for blue; bluish is not truly a earthy angiosperm colour... but you'll spot honestly each colour there, including immoderate mixed-colour tulips," she said.

"A batch of radical bask getting that cleanable Instagram photograph oregon getting household photos successful there."

The operation's Facebook leafage says the archetypal play it's unfastened volition be best for those funny in picking tulips that volition past longer, with the tract betwixt 30 and 50 per cent in bloom. The second play is champion for photos, with 65 to 80 per cent of the flowers in bloom. And the 3rd play volition connection radical their past accidental to sojourn the remaining full blooms. 

Belfast Tulips besides programs events astir the tulips' precocious season, specified arsenic a overgarment nighttime connected May 30, a vendors' marketplace connected May 31, and yoga sessions successful the tulip field.

"There's a batch of antithetic things you tin do," Viaene said, adding: "You tin bring your animals successful excessively arsenic agelong arsenic they're connected leash.

"It's benignant of conscionable a large household oregon person time retired successful the fields successful springtime."