Flowers/Travel

The Beautiful Flower Fields of Carlsbad, California

Globetrotters April Monthly Challenge — “Floral Beauty Around the World”

When I saw that the April Monthly Challenge at Globetrotters was about Flowers, my first thoughts went to Desert Flowers, which I was exposed to at an early age in the Mohave Desert.

Globetrotters April Challenge by Michele Maize

But I already wrote a story recently about Desert Flowers, so I needed another flower topic.

The flower fields in Carlsbad, California, are famous. Not worldwide famous, but certainly locally.

They are beautiful, but visiting them has been turned into quite a commercial affair. Tickets are only available online for a specific time slot; you must arrive only 15 minutes before or after your assigned slot. And the price has doubled since my last visit.

I still believe it’s worth seeing, which is evident by the popularity of the fields. But that popularity also means crowds. So I skipped last weekend and went today, which was a Monday.

The fields are massive, and what you see here is only part of it, as they plant in rotation so that other areas will bloom at different times, extending the viewing time.

Fields are open to the public from March 1st to May 14th for the 2023 season.

Looking at all the different colors, I just assumed there were many different flowers. But it's all one kind of flower, just in many different colors.

The flower is Ranunculus, which I hadn’t heard of prior to my first visit.

There are 50 acres of Ranunculus, which have decorated these hills in Carlsbad for over 30 years in 13 colors.

No picture I could take can do justice to the explosion of color found here.

It really is breathtaking.

The first time I came here, a friend said, just look for the windmill since you can see the windmill from the interstate. The windmill has nothing to do with the flower fields, but it’s next to them.

I thought it was an interesting connection that Dutch Bulbs grew among Dutch windmills, and here was California’s own Dutch Style Windmill next to fifty acres of flowers.

Neither has anything to do with the other.

Very few of the flowers are sold as cut flowers, they are left to go dormant, and then the bulbs are harvested and sold worldwide.

And yes, you can buy Ranunculus bulbs from last year's crop to take home for around $5 to $6 for a pack of 6.

The flower fields are an excellent place for children; many activities are available just for the younger set.

Schools plan field trips, and it's common to see school buses arriving during weekdays.

They do agriculture education, butterfly talks, and insects are discussed, both good and bad, and, with hay rides, a playground, and mining for rocks, all the kids I saw were all smiles.

There were several raised planting beds of Clover, which was left over from last month's St. Patricks Day.

Several kids were picking thru the clover, trying to find that elusive four-leaf. They say there is one four-leaf out of every 10,000; who knew the odds were that high?

One lad about seven years old started jumping up and down, “I found one, I found one.” But his excitement was squashed after Dad discovered the extra leaf was from another clover who now only had two.

Undeterred, he knelt back down and resumed his search. I was happy he was searching for a four-leaf clover out in nature instead of a Pikachu on a video game.

Speaking of flowers, the clover was in bloom with purple flowers. I didn’t know that clover bloomed.

Did you?

And you thought you were having a bad hair day.

There was a butterfly garden, but it might have been too windy for the butterflies today. I didn’t see any.

While the field is all Ranunculus flowers, they do grow other flowers in greenhouses, including some spectacular Cymbidium Orchids. These are also available for sale.

And they are also famous for their Paul Ecke poinsettias. These are grown in twenty different varieties and many colors.

And while it might be April today, a greenhouse full of poinsettias and a Santa Village Playground made it feel a bit like December.

The Carlsbad flower fields do have other offerings during the year, including a giant field of flowers that form the American flag using red, white, and blue petunias planted on a 300 by 170-foot hillside.

They have a sea of Sunflowers covering 5 acres which will bloom later this month in all colors and sizes.

A pick your own blueberry field, and much more.

This was my third visit, and while I enjoyed my time in the Carlsbad flower fields, I still prefer standing in the middle of a desert filled with color, preferably with no people.

Here is an excellent story about tropical flowers by JoAnn Ryan — After desert flowers, I think tropical flowers would be my next favorite.

So with desert flowers being my favorite, here is a great story about that very subject by Anne Bonfert Rock on desert flowers; let's have a “superbloom” this year.

Thanks to the Globetrotter team for providing this outlet for travel stories and for the hard work the editors do each day. The number of stories they review is amazing, and I do appreciate all the work and time.

This will be my fourth day in the thirty-day “Start a writing habit” challenge by Tai Le Grice.