'TIS THE SEASON
U-pick Tulips in Texas? The labor of love that is “Tulipville:” Hemingway Hill’s u-pick tulip and daffodil event
October 15, 2026 | by Jennifer Loyall
Are there certain childhood memories that warm your heart?
Tulips are one of my favorite flowers. I remember as a kid thinking of them as the “fancy” flowers, with their long green stems and cupped flower heads of brilliant bright reds, soft yellows and pinks. My mother would bring home bunches of them and put them in a clear glass jar in the center of the kitchen table. I would stare at them each morning as I had my crunchy cereal before school. The tulips symbolized, in our home, that spring was here. If you had told my eight-year-old self then, that today I’d be growing over 70,000 tulips for our u- pick Tulipville event at Hemingway Hill, I think I would have giggled!
Do you love tulips too?
There is nothing like standing in a field of them, witnessing the glory of rows and rows of their breathtaking color, swaying in the wind. To be able to then go pick as many of them as you want, well, that takes the experience to an entirely new level. And you can, at our u- pick tulip event in mid February to early March!
It’s not easy building a u-pick tulip field in North Texas.
To make a field of tulips happen in Texas, a lot of planning ( and considerable amount praying ) goes on months and months in advance. It’s a gift when it blooms, and it’s a quick season! Ideally, the u- pick tulips season starts the third weekend in February. If we have a warm winter, things get going a little sooner. But the planning and preparation begin an entire year beforehand. Here’s how we do it…
Field data from the previous season’s tulips is vital
Planning for a tulip season always begins with notes we take all through the previous year’s season. I feel like Lewis and Clark out there with my farm notebook, walking around taking notes on all the varieties of tulips. I record the names of varieties that flourished, pay close attention to the timing of when and for how long certain tulips actually bloomed, and note the color palettes that people gravitate towards and love.
If you were to walk the 100-foot rows with me (separated by 3 foot walk ways, perfect for giving kids lots of space to roam and run) you’ll see all these 12-inch wooden markers in the ground, with important dates on them. They let us know when we planted each section and provide key data as we plan for the next year’s season.
We learn a lot from these notes! In our first year, Ile de France, a red tulip, bloomed out of the blue in January and missed Valentine’s Day by a mile. (rest assured this guy is going to get planted last this year). When we experimented with fringed tulips, which have delicate serrated edges on their petals, we were surprised by how much you loved them! So we’re making sure we’ll have them back in even more colors.
With this field data, I begin to build our bulb order for the next season. I make my wish list, which evolves again in May after I get updates from Holland about their growing season. How it goes there affects what’s available for us to import here. With that info in hand, I finalize which tulips and which growers will make the cut for our next season’s u-pick field.
Our tulips go through a cooling process before they’re ever planted.
Tulips like long, cool winters–12 to 16 weeks below 45F to ensure proper development–which is NOT what we get in Terrell Texas!
So, we have to artificially create winter conditions for them. Our bulbs are specially cooled, both before they’re shipped to us, and after they arrive. Most bulb suppliers offer two different levels of commercial cooling. When we first started, we initially chose the lower level, but we learned our lesson! In December 2025 when temperatures hit in the 80’s near Christmas, all our minimally-chilled yellow tulips bloomed early. We had to rush and quickly replant over a third of our field with more pre-chilled bulbs so you would have this color to pick from in February.
Today we choose longer cooling times on the majority of our bulbs, and as soon as they arrive at Hemingway they head straight into our on-site flower cooler until it’s time to get them in the ground.
Specialized planting strategies help us manage unpredictable weather.
Once a bulb gets planted out in the field, any significant changes in weather can make a huge impact. To some degree I feel like a Tulip meteorologist, checking and re-checking the conditions every day, and watching for proper plant development!
We take several steps during the planting process to orchestrate the weeks of blooming during Tulipville. First is ensuring that the bulbs get planted at the correct depth. It’s absolutely vital that they’re buried at least six inches deep, as this is their best defense against unseasonably warm temperatures. When they’re too shallow, they’re far more likely to get too warm too fast, and bloom early on short stems. Since the topography of our field varies a little, I send out all my people with rulers when they plant so they can actually measure that the plow has gone down deep enough.
Plowing the field is an art all its own. In our first year, we used a plumbing trencher to help break through some of the tree debris buried in our soil; then we built a custom plow to pull behind our tractor. Now we’ve invested in a tulip planter from Holland that will help us trench to the correct depth and plant our thousands of bulbs more quickly. Speaking of planting, if you’re physically able and looking for a farming experience, we have a few slots open for bulb planters! Email us with the subject line “I want to help plant tulips.”
Succession planting helps us spread out the bloom time
Aside from planting depth, we guide the bloom time of our tulips by planting them in stages.
Different types of tulips naturally have early or late bloom times, and when I first started with tulips, I thought that would be enough. I planted the whole crop in late October and early November. (Because we have a Christmas tree operation, by mid November, we are in full reindeer mode stocking the trees and preparing thousands of warm apple cider donuts). But I quickly learned that around here, it’s not so simple.
Now we know that Dallas winters merit an extra step or three. Even in the middle of the busy holiday season, it’s worth spreading out the tulip planting for a few more weeks. It gives us just a little more insurance that our blooms will arrive on time! Today we plant in successions over a two month period to increase our chances of a great u pick tulip event, no matter what happens with the weather.
We also like to give YOU the best chance of seeing some of your favorite tulips, no matter what week you decide to come! For example, a customer favorite (and mine too) called Icoon tends to be one of the first to bloom. We try to extend the harvest window by planting out a percentage of our stock over several weeks. We also harvest a portion of the blooms ourselves and hold them in our cooler so that the Tulipville customers who come in March can add them to their bouquets. Some things just shouldn’t be missed!
Not just any old flowers…we bring you the best of the best.
At Hemingway Hill, we want you to have a beautiful experience with things you may never have encountered before. So, not only do we work extraordinarily hard to bring you cool-season flowers in our warmer climate, we do it with the highest quality tulips available. These are not the run-of-the-mill blooms you’ll find at the grocery store. We plant wedding-quality tulips in all kinds of varieties. Our u-pick field is filled with unique double tulips, striped tulips, fringed blooms, and tulips of unusual colors. We don’t hold back putting these top-quality flowers into the field for you. We want to give you the best of the best! On that note…
New this year, u- pick daffodils in unique varieties
When you think about daffodils, you might imagine a cheery yellow trumpet-shape center surrounded by a star of petals. They’re lovely. But if it’s all you know of daffodils, that’s like staying at base camp on a mountain and never experiencing the peak. There is so much beauty in store for you! This year, we are adding daffodils to our u-pick, featuring all sorts of newer varieties you may never have seen before. They will surprise and delight you! We have planted 1,000 of Sir Winston Churchill, Tahiti and many more and have created a special section in the farm for them that we intend to expand each year. These flowers fare a little better in Texas, and they multiply and come back each year. We look forward to many years of gorgeous harvests! As with tulips, you can pick them by the stem. However, most varieties bloom early in the season, so come at the beginning of u-pick tulip season to see them.
Mark your calendar now for late February, and come pick a bouquet of tulips and daffodils!
As you can see, Tulipville at Hemingway Hill is really something special. It takes careful planning, a lot of work, and a lot of prayer to bring you the wonder of u-pick tulips and daffodils, and we couldn’t be happier to do it! Come and see us the week after Valentine’s Day…unless Mother Nature decides we should get started a week early. Or, if you want to plant some bulbs in your own garden, stop by even earlier! We sell our specialty chilled tulips at the farm during our Christmas season which starts the weekend prior to Thanksgiving. We’ll send you home with planting instructions, and maybe even an apple cider donut!
Once Tulipville starts, we’ll be open Wednesday through Sunday, with up-pick flowers, apple cider donuts (barring rain), real homemade ice cream, and other goodies on weekends. Free field admission for families during “stroller hour,” weekdays 8:30-10:30am!
Hemingway Hill is located in Terrell, TX, 45 minutes east of Dallas.
We can’t wait to see you at Hemingway Hill, a fun place to take the family outdoors.
Jennifer Loyall
Jen Loyall, CEO turned flowerpreneur and agritourism expert, is the founder and lead farmer of Hemingway Hill in Terrell, Texas. When she’s not planting flowers, hosting thousands of people at her farm, or running HH’s corporate division, she’s probably somewhere reading a book or looking for her dogs.