Southern Hemisphere Tulips are Here.

"The tulip and the butterfly
Appear in gayer coats than I;
Let me be dressed fine as I will.
Flies, worms, and flowers exceed me still."
                                                                        -Isaac Watts

We are now harvesting the beginning of our Southern Hemisphere tulips. This will continue through the holidays, providing you with the best quality tulips available even though it is autumn.

How do we do this?  Its really quite simple to explain. We have a long standing partnership with some bulb growers in New Zealand. Here, they have been growing tulips for many years, and the tulips have naturally adjusted to the seasons being reversed from the Northern Hemisphere.

Tulips are the most expressive flower!

We pull the bulbs from the ground when they are dormant and ship them by boat to foggy, coastal California. When the acclimated bulbs wake up, they are bursting with spring time vigor even though in the United States it is almost the first official day of fall.

World's Favorite Tulips

We play a very good hearted joke on these tulips.  Over the summer in California, we simulate winter and spring in our coolers, creating a pretty impressive illusion of Mother Nature's work. This differentiates Sun Valley from other farms; since we are able to control the bulbs development and growth rate by controlling the environment. Then, we are able to carefully schedule when the crates of soil grown tulips are placed in the greenhouse. When the tulips go to the greenhouse, they take off growing...just like it's spring in New Zealand.

This system gives us unparalleled control over color mixes and varieties, so you can be sure we are heavy on fall colors.  

To walk out to the tulip greenhouses is to time travel six months ahead in time. The energy of all these tulips dedicated to the singular task of creating a big beautiful bloom is impressive. This energy combined with the flourish of activity from our awesome team members picking, planting and tending the tulip crop makes the tulip greenhouse one of the most lively places in our sleepy town perched on the edge of Humboldt Bay.

We have tulips in all the warm tones of autumn, so dig into these soil grown beauties, and share in the bounty of spring quality tulips right now.  It's Southern Hemi Tulip Time!