Best Places to See Washington’s Blooming Spring Flowers
The Pacific Northwest shows its true colors during the spring’s flower festivals
By Beau Iverson March 25, 2019
This article originally appeared in the March 2019 issue of Seattle magazine.
This article appears in print in the March 2019 issue. Click here to subscribe.
Goodbye gloom, hello bloom. Our annual influx of springtime daylight is coming (spring forward on March 10!), and with it a vibrant interruption in our dreary winter weather. Whether it’s daffodils or tulips that do it for you, Seattle is a fantastic home base for beholding the floral blossoms.
Within Seattle, by mid-March the University of Washington Quad is awash in crowds that come to view the cherry blossoms (check the blooming stage of the trees). Farther afield, daffodils get their due during the fifth annual La Conner Daffodil Festival, with events throughout March and more than 450 acres of blooms. It’s followed by the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival (4/1–4/30), and finally by Wenatchee’s Washington State Apple Blossom Festival (4/25–5/5). Check websites for specific events.
Follow Us
A New Place to Ice Skate by the Water
Hyatt Regency Lake Washington’s dockside rink offers lake views and eco-friendly synthetic ice.
Skating season has officially arrived. There’s a particular joy in gliding—or trying to—on cold days. I always go for the outdoor rinks, especially the ones strung with twinkling lights. It can be so romantic. And this year, there’s a new place to lace up. A 71-foot by 38-foot covered Glice rink is up and running…
Bergen: Finding a Home, Abroad
A trip across western Norway reveals strikingly Northwest sensibilities.
A few months ago, we randomly walked into Wallingford’s Fat Cat Records. Greeting us, face-out by the cash register, was not Nirvana, not Soundgarden, but Peer Gynt Suite, by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. Was this a Norse omen, a mischievous prank from Loki? For us, two Seattleites with a trip to Norway on the…
Hives Among the Headstones
Inside a north Seattle project reimagining cemeteries as sanctuaries for pollinators.
In many old stories, bees are more than just insects. They’re messengers—tiny intermediaries between the living and the dead. There was once even a custom in Europe and America known as “telling the bees:” When a family member died, or another significant life event occurred, someone would go to the hive to share the news….
Dispatches from Greenland, Part Two: Nuuk
An insider’s guide to Greenland’s mysterious, overlooked, and charming capital.
Greenland is too vast to take in all at once. Yet a few days in Nuuk—the island’s compact, curious capital, just a four-hour flight from Newark—offer a surprisingly complete portrait. Nuuk changes like the weather that shapes it: by turns wild and polished; intimate and bold. To Northerners, it feels as hectic as Manhattan; to…