The Art of Tea and Conversation
At Tea Zen Teahouse in southeast Portland, Fengxia Liu provides a traditional Chinese tea ceremony steeped in history, culture, and connection.
A visual journey through some of the floral highlights of the annual tulip festival held in Woodburn, Oregon.
BY LAURA J. COLE | March 23, 2024
This weekend kicks off the annual Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival in Woodburn, Oregon.
About an hour south of Portland in the heart of Oregon’s picturesque countryside, the festival celebrates spring’s arrival and offers a dog-friendly opportunity to stroll among acres of vibrant tulip fields, sip some estate-grown wine, and purchase fresh cut flowers and potted bulbs.
Tulip Festivals in the PNW
Harrison Tulip Fest
Agassiz, BC
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival
Mount Vernon, WA
Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival
Woodburn, OR
Type: Triumph
Color: Pink with red flames
Fun fact: Triumph tulips are also known as Rembrandt tulips, though the artist never painted the flower. Instead, they were given his name because both were “born” in the city of Leiden—the artist literally so and the city being where tulip growing in Holland began.
Type: Lily flowering
Color: Rich orange with strokes of vermillion
Fun fact: In the 1930s, a Holland High School gym teacher choreographed a dance to “Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Dog Gone?” for the Tulip Time Festival. Dancing has since become a favorite tradition of the festival that includes performers wearing traditional Dutch costumes and wooden shoes known as klompen.
Type: Triumph
Color: Purple-red accented by icy white
Fun fact: The word tiramisu means “pick me up” and the dessert is said to have been invented by a madame who would serve the aphrodisiac dessert to customers of her brothel.
Type: Triumph
Color: Reddish brown transitioning to golden apricot on the edges
Fun fact: Tulips are native to central Asia but didn’t become popular until reaching the Netherlands, where in the 1600s, during a time now known as Tulip Mania, the flower cost 10 times more than a working man’s average salary. The Netherlands continues to be the world’s largest commercial producer of the flower, which has more than 150 species and 3,000 different varieties.
Type: Triumph
Color: Cream with an intense cherry-pink edge that deepens and darkens with age
Fun fact: It’s named after one of the few female painters of the Dutch Golden Age, who was well known during her lifetime but whose work was largely forgotten after her death and attributed to either artist Frans Hals or her husband.
Type: Fringed
Color: Deep red
Fun fact: The variety was a gift from the Dutch embassy to the city of Philadelphia for appreciation of the 2017 Philadelphia Flower Show titled, Holland: Flowering the World.
Type: Triumph
Color: Marigold-orange with red flames
Fun fact: The flower is named after the Dutch Princess Irene, who was forced to flee the Netherlands with her family when she was 1 during World War II. They escaped to Ottawa, Canada, and the Netherlands presented Canada with tulip bulbs in gratitude. In 1953, Ottawa held its inaugural tulip festival in the family’s honor.
At Tea Zen Teahouse in southeast Portland, Fengxia Liu provides a traditional Chinese tea ceremony steeped in history, culture, and connection.
Low tides and volunteers offer a chance to learn more about all the life teeming beneath the waves.
