For the past 75 years Albany, NY has celebrated Tulip Festival, to honor our city's official flower. This annual festival features the traditional Dutch street scrubbing, crowning of the Tulip Queen, the Tulip Ball, live bands, food vendors and small business booths, and over 100,000 tulips and other flowers planted throughout Washington Park.
In June 1948 Albany's Mayor Erastus Corning declared the tulip as Albany's official flower. Then in October 1948 Queen Wilhelmina of Njimegen, Netherlands gifted Albany 2,000 Orange Wonder tulip bulbs, suggesting they adopt that specific variety as their official tulip. Njimegen had become Albany's sister city in 1945, after that city was devastated during WWII. In 1949, at the recommendation of Knickerbocker New's editor Charles Mooney. Thus a tradition was born.
If you're heading to Albany this weekend, you'll see over three dozen varieties of tulips and other flowers in a wide array of colors. This year in addition to the traditional layout of flowers, most in rectangular and circular shaped beds, there's also a large bed shaped like a 75 to celebrate the festival's significant anniversary. The tulips will be on display to through next weekend, May 20-21, at which time the bulbs will be dug up and sold to the public.
Check out 5 of my favorite flowers I saw when I frolicked with them last weekend:
1. Purple Circus
2. Marilyn
3. Amazing Parrot
3. Blushing Lady
4. Flair
5. Cooper Image
Visit our Tulip Festival collection here and be sure to check us out @518Mercantile on Instagram for more beautiful tulips and other flowers from my adventure in Washington Park last weekend.