My favorite Pella tulip photos

I usually travel to Pella for tulip photos on the weekend before the festival, but that didn’t happen this year. Instead, I’ll be waiting to visit during the actual festival, which is May 5th thru 7th. Visit https://www.pellahistorical.org/tuliptimeschedule for all the details and schedules.

In the meantime, here’s a collection of some of my favorite tulip shots from Pella, Iowa over the years.

Tulips at Centra Park in Pella, with the small windmill in the background that serves as the tourist booth. Taken in 2019.

Tulips in front of Vermeer Windmill, taken in 2019

Capturing closeups of tulips at Sunken Gardens in 2018.

Tulips at Central Park in Pella, Iowa. Taken in 2021. What I love about the tulip beds in Pella’s Central Park is that some of the beds are extremely large. I think the largest best has 5,000 bulbs in one single bed and they typically have the same exact bulb, which creates scenes like this.
Tulips at the Central Park in Pella. In the prior years, I would visit on Sunday afternoon before the festival starts, and you can see that the locals use this time for their last dress rehearsal before the event kicks off.

Tulip closeups at Central Park in Pella, Iowa. Taken in 2021

Tulips at Central Park in Pella, taken in 2019.

The spring of 2021 was extremely warm – allowing the crabapple trees to blossom at the same time as the tulips in Centra Park in Pella, Iowa.

Another photo from 2021, when I visited Pella’s tulips extremely early in the morning.
Getting more closeups of tulips at Sunken Gardens in Pella, Iowa in 2020

2020 (above) vs 2021 (below)

The two aerial photos of Pella’s Central Park were taken exactly a year apart. The top photo was taken April 30th, 2020, and the bottom photo was taken April 30th, 2021. The 2020 photo shows a more typical or normal spring, where the tulips are near peak bloom, but the tree leaves are not fully developed. The spring of 2021 was just crazy warm (and dry), causing concerns that the tulips might peak too soon. However, that wasn’t the case, they have a variety that set to peak across the entire timeframe.

A sea of red tulps at the Scholte House in Pella, Iowa. Taken in 2020.

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