How the Field Came To Bloom

Starting back 3 years ago, Robert and Carol started thinking a Tulip field would be a nice attraction to add to our business. Sunflower fields were becoming popular, and there is nothing wrong with planting sunflowers (which we are going to do this year), but Tulips! Well, there are not many fields of tulips around the Midwest. Ok, Holland Michigan has some, but most of the Tulip Festival is in town, with very beautiful plantings of tulips everywhere. On this side of Lake Michigan… no large fields of tulips so it seemed like this could be a very popular and unique attraction!

Robert and Carol traveled to Washington state, where they grow lots of tulips, and did some sightseeing and research into how to grow them. We thought about it, did some planning, and then, in the fall of 2020, during our very popular Adventure Farm busiest times, our corn maze designer called us with an idea. Shawn, who owns MazePlay up in Idaho, has been designing our corn mazes with us for all of the 20 years we have had the “World’s Largest”, most intricately designed, corn maze! He knew we were interested in planting some tulips and found a contact in northern California where he could rent a commercial tulip bulb planter. That’s right – they actually make such a thing. This one was manufactured in Holland and is a large, complicated machine. Shawn also found a contact in Holland who would ship tulip bulbs to us, so our plans were set in motion.

We started talking about how many bulbs to plant – 10,000 bulbs would make a very nice splash of color! But, in true Richardson style, we thought this could turn into something very popular, and we didn’t want to be too small. After much hurried discussion (remember this is in October when we were very busy with the Adventure Farm), we decided to go “BIG or go Home” and plant 300,000 tulip bulbs! They would cover almost 5 acres. Shawn did some design work and we decided to plant 200,000 bulbs in color blocks with walkways in between the blocks, 30,000 bulbs in a beautiful “sun burst” design, and 70,000 bulbs in mixed colors in an adjacent pick-your-own area. This will be a true, picture-taking heaven!

Shawn picked up the planter in California, the bulbs were shipped across the Atlantic Ocean and delivered to us by semi- truck, and Shawn drove the planter to us in a trailer. Yes, that’s a lot of miles traveled to get the tulips planted. We planted the tulips in mid-November after the soil had cooled but before freezing, and then covered them with chopped cornstalks to help insulate them from harsh winter weather. It took a full week to get them in the ground, but it was a very interesting process. We took some nice pictures and videos which we will be sharing through our website and various publicity channels (Facebook: Richardson “World’s Largest” Corn Maze).

The 2021 tulip festival was a great success with thousands of happy people taking about a Billion pictures! What fun! Remember Covid? We were one of the very few things you could do outside, with plenty of space, AND something very enjoyable!

In the fall, 2021 we added another 300,000 tulips to add to the original 300,000 to bloom in spring, 2022! Again, great fun, another Billion pictures taken, and we loved it too! We planted another 300,000 in the fall, 2022 and kept the other 600,000 in the ground. For the spring 2023 Tulip Festival, we noticed that hundreds of thousands of the previous year’s bulbs had sprouted daughter bulbs which had a smaller, but still beautiful bloom, so we were pretty sure we had over a Million blooms!

We also noticed that the bulbs that had bloomed 3 years were a bit smaller and the plants were not quite as vigorous as we wanted. We decided to plow up those 2020 planted bulbs and let the ground rest for a year with a ryegrass/ wheat mixture. Then in the fall of 2023 we planted 350,000 tulips and 50,000 daffodils so we will have over a Million blooming in 2024!

More structures and improvements are in the works for 2025 and you will love them! Thanks for coming, thanks for reading, and thanks for sharing our story!


the Richardson Farm Families