Abbotsford Tulip Festival moving to Okanagan

ARMSTRONG (NEWS 1130) – Fans of the Abbotsford Tulip Festival will now have to travel a little further to take a stroll through the flowers or snap a colourful selfie among the blossoms.

Creator Alexis Szarek and her young family have moved to Armstrong in the North Okanagan, and taken the festival with them.

“It is a bittersweet day,” Szarek said. “While we’re sad to leave Abbotsford and the community that we’ve built there, we are excited for what’s to come.”

The festival launched in 2016 and has since drawn thousands of visitors to the Fraser Valley each year as well as employed dozens of staff and volunteers. More than 2.5 million tulips have blossomed at their farm.

Szarek and the festival took a major financial hit last year due to its COVID-19 pandemic-related closure. Despite being an outdoor event, Szarek says they didn’t want to take any chances with public health and weren’t confident they could provide a completely safe experience.

“In addition, my husband and I, we’re a young couple starting out, we have one daughter. Our family is growing so we were looking to move to a smaller community,” she said.

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Szarek hopes the festival will bloom again in Armstrong, but due to the ongoing pandemic, she says it likely won’t happen until at least 2022.

“With the second wave and who knows if there’s a potential third wave, there’s too much uncertainty for us to have planned a festival for this spring. In order to do that you have to plant the bulbs in the fall, in October,” she said, adding she hopes to host a smaller sunflower festival in the late summer or early fall.

She says while she isn’t expecting the same volume of visitors as she had in Abbotsford, she’s optimistic the tulips will still draw local and tourist crowds.

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