Tulip festival moving to Okanagan from Abbotsford after founder relocates

The Bloom Abbotsford Tulip Festival is saying goodbye to the Fraser Valley and hello to the North Okanagan.

Founder Alexis Szarek said in a news release on Monday that the land where the festival had been held for four consecutive years was sold to new owners while she and her family had moved to Armstrong.

"It's a bittersweet feeling to say goodbye to the incredible community that supported our vision for the last few years but we're hopeful for the future of the event in our new community," said Szarek in the statement.

Born Warmerdam, Szarek is a Dutch Canadian whose grandfather and great-grandfather were both tulip farmers in the Netherlands. She grew up watching her father operatea 60-acre tulip farm in Abbotsford.

Szarek says the relocation to the B.C. Interior is primarily a family decision.

"[My] husband and I are a young couple. We have one daughter and our family's growing," Szarek told Chris Walker, the host of CBC's Daybreak South. "We're looking for a bit of a slower pace of life."

From 2016 to 2019 the event attracted 100,000 visitors each year who came to witness the hundreds of thousands of tulips in bloom.

The Bloom Abbotsford Tulip Festival was cancelled in 2020 due to COVID-19.

Szarek says the event isn't happening this year either because she didn't plant the tulips in October in order for them tobloom from April to May.

"In October, there was still too much uncertainty," she said.

Szarek hopes to run a sunflower festival this summer and the tulip festival in the spring of 2022, but says these all depend on how the pandemic goes.

"Unless it's safe to do so, we won't be opening," she said.

Despite no timeline when the festival will be up and running in the new location, Patti Noonan, theexecutive director of the Armstrong Spallumcheen Chamber of Commerce, welcomes Szarek's decision.

"We are over the moon. I couldn't be more excited," Noonan said. "It's such a good fit for our [farming] community."

Tap the link below to hear Alexis Szarek and Patti Noonan on Daybreak South: