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The West Side Community Garden (WSCG) Tulip Festival will return this year, featuring 75 varieties of tulips. The festival starts on or around 15 April and will run until early May. In early November, park staff and volunteers planted 13,000 bulbs in WSCG’s 1.25-acre site. The festival has been held for more than 50 years, even though the WSCG did not exist officially initially. The area was a wasteland and was later turned into a garden by residents who eventually formed the coalition and fought to stop development on the site in the 1970s.
you will be able to see 75 species of this flower
The annual West Side Community Garden (WSCG) Tulip Festival has been symbolizing the arrival of spring on the Upper West Side for half a century. This year’s festival will begin on or around April 15 and run until the end of the first week of May, Westside RAG reports. The date is inaccurate, since everything depends on the tulips and their flowering.
During the Festival, WSCG visitors will be able to see 75 varieties of tulips (!). In early November, park staff and volunteers planted 13,000 bulbs that will bloom during the festival.
WSCG covers an area of 1.25 acres (0.5 ha). At one end is a flower garden, and at the other – individual vegetable plots. There used to be a wasteland there. In the 1970s, the buildings were demolished and plans were made to rebuild. But for some time the territory remained empty and turned into a dump of garbage and even old cars. Eventually, several residents of the area started gardening there. They ended up forming a coalition that fought to get the site protected from development.
In 1983, the WSCG registered as a non-profit organization, and in 1989 it received ownership of the garden.
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But the Tulip Festival was founded in the 1970s, long before the official creation of the garden.
At that time, one of the area’s gardeners, Charles Jones, unofficially began planting bulbs in the fall in order to arrange a “tulip festival” in the spring. This festival has since grown into an annual regional event.
The WSCG is open every day from early morning until dusk and tulips can be seen daily. On the weekends of April 15-16 and 22-23, information stands will be installed. There, WSCG members will provide information about tulips from 10:00 to 18:00.
If you just want to admire the flowers, come on weekdays when the garden is less crowded. It also makes sense to come several times with a break of 7-10 days – so you can definitely see all the flowers.
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