Tulip festival Closed
The tulip are now finished for 2011 and the 58th Tesselaar Tulip Festival is now closed. We hope you enjoyed your visit. Dont forget to share photos of your visit on our facebook page
See you again in 2012 (September 13th to October 9th 2012)
Grow Tulips in your home garden
Tulip bulbs are for sale and ready for planting in your garden now. To browse the entire range of tulips available from the Tulip Farm, please see our Tulip bulb Nursery
Bulb Fundraising
Fundraising for your School or Community Group is a lot more fun with Tesselaar Bulb Fundraising. Selling Spring flowering bulbs for fundraising is a great idea because they are always popular. See our bulb fundraising page for more information and application forms.
a field of dreams
Back in 1954 our Grandfather dreamt of creating an amazing floral festival and now, 57 years later his dream lives on. Come and see our field of dreams this spring. The colourful flowers are out of this world. There is amazing live entertainment daily, market stalls, a fantastical sculpture competition, themed and charity days and of course a wonderful amount of fun to be had.
The Tulip is truly an extraordinary flower. To see it planted in fields on mass is a dream come true.
Whole nations have surrendered to its beauty. In Turkey was the symbol of the Ottoman Empire. The kingdom devoted its large gardens to the blooms. The Sultan’s hosted the very first Tulip Festivals which were exquisite and wonderful affairs. The stuff of dreams, where tortoises bore candles to light up the blooms at night, guests dressed in colours to match the flowers and the music was created by hundreds of nightingales hung in cages. The period in Turkish history named after the Tulip (Laledevri) was a peaceful time when the nation focused on art and poetry much of it inspired by the Tulip.
Back in the 1630’s in the Netherlands dreams were built on Tulips. They were more valuable than gold. Their erraticcolour variations had people on fire with the excitement of possibilities. An ordinary bulb could mysteriously change from a solid to a mixed colour and potentially be worth more than the most valuable home in Amsterdam. People became so enamored with the blooms they created a futures market where dreams could be made or broken. Today still, the Dutch are continually refining the Tulip, and making their fortune. Today it is the quest for the black Tulip that has them daring to dream.
The Tulip has inspired extraordinary tales … The very first tulip is said to have sprung from the blood of a distraught lover in the Persian folktale of Farhad and Shirin. In England their blooms are said to rock the babes of fairies to sleep at night and keep them safe.
The Tulip came to Australia on the dreams of Cees and Johanna Tesselaar. The couple left the Netherlands on their wedding day, just before the start of WWII with love in their hearts and tulip bulbs in their suitcase! Back in the Netherlands Johanna’s family grew bulbs and Cees’ father worked in a bulb auction house. Their vision was to bring the flower of their affection to their new home. Settling in Silvan their dream came true. Since that time, they have been able to share their dream and demonstrate their love of the flower through the Tulip Festival, a love that has extended through three generations.
You might say we are dreamers because we love the Tulip so much. But we take pride in keeping the dream alive with Tesselaar Tulip Festival. No two years are alike, and certainly no two days. We work hard to keep everyone entertained so the festival can grow and thrive compelling new generations to come and visit us to see the beauty of the Tulips in Spring.
So stop daydreaming and make your dreams can come true at the festival, you’ll soon be adrift on a sea of colour that is out of this world.