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| TULIP MADNESS: Throughout the course of the spring Dallas Blooms, and beyond more than 150,000 visitors come to view the tulips and azaleas in particular. Over the course of the year, nearly 350,000 people visit the Dallas Arboretum. |
20th Anniversary of Dallas Blooms
It was 1984, and the Dallas Arboretum was ready to take the garden to the next level. The idea was simple: create a spring bulb display that would rival… Holland.
If you plant it, they will come.
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| LEAD BLOOM: Dallas Blooms features beautiful tulips, but azaleas also play a major role in the spring display. It was landscape designer Naud Burnett II who convinced the Arboretum to install azaleas, and his first planting was around the Camp House. Burnett was also the designer for the spectacular Jonsson Color Garden, which showcases more than 2,000 varieties of azaleas, one of the largest collections in the country. |
Dallas has always been a city lacking in natural resources and public parks, so much so that early visitor brochures actually touted the big sky as a point of interest. Against that backdrop, it was no surprise that when the posters went up announcing the first Dallas Blooms 20 years ago, there was genuine excitement: a major floral display in our own city?Natural beauty amongst us?
It was the brainchild of a feisty board of directors and some generous patrons who pooled their resources first and foremost to buy bulbs—140,000 of them. The idea was to create a display as vivid as a Disney cartoon so that even people with no interest in flowers would come the first time and be wowed, and maybe even come back the following year.
And so they did. The first Blooms was promoted in classic Dallas style as the largest selection of tulips and other annuals west of Holland. (Hear the drawl!) More than 40,000 people attended, and they came back. And they brought family and friends. Today Dallas Blooms is the largest outdoor floral festival in the Southwest, attended by more than 100,000 people from all over the region.
This year, to commemorate the occasion of Dallas Blooms 20th anniversary, a record-setting 300,000 bulbs were planted for spring, along with more than 100,000 naturalized bulbs, including tulips, daffodils, Dutch iris, and hyacinth. Of course, lovers of annuals and perennials are not slighted: in shades of pink, red, purple, orange, yellow, and white will be 70,000 pansies and violas, 20,000 azaleas, and thousands of other spring-blooming plants.
In the end, the Dallas Arboretum not only created a display that rivals Holland, Blooms exceeds it. Do not miss one of the city’s finest achievements, opening March 6 and concluding Easter weekend, April 11.
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| EVER GROWING: Once the original Dallas Blooms became a local institution, the Arboretum developed its fall counterpart, including a breathtaking display of mums. |
Visit the Arboretum
The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden is located on the southeastern shore of White Rock Lake at 8525 Garland Road. The Arboretum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults, $6 for seniors 65 and older, $4 for children 3-12, and free for children 2 and under. For more information, call 214-327-4901 or visit www.dallasarboretum.org.
Calendar of Events 2004
March 6-April 11
20th Anniversary of Dallas Blooms Spring
April 16
Southern Living Gardening School
April 16-18
Garden Gallery
April 29
Women’s Council of the Dallas Arboretum’s Mad Hatter’s Tea Party
April 30
Arbor Day at the Arboretum
May-June
Cool Thursdays concert series
Fall
Dallas Blooms Autumn
November-December 31
Holiday at the Arboretum
