Tulip Festival to brighten up Rotorua

Tulips in full bloom at a previous year's event in Government Gardens. Photo/Supplied

Rotorua's renowned annual Tulip Festival is ready to usher in spring weather once again with more than 100,000 brightly coloured tulips blooming around the city over the next few weeks.

The annual festival will involve 12 fun, family events throughout the first weekend of the school holidays - October 5 to 9 - for a small cost or free.

Eagle-eyed residents will note some tulips have already started to bloom. Rotorua Lakes Council spokeswoman Kathy Nicholls said with a mixture of science and finger-crossing, the rest should bloom before the festival officially opened.

Ms Nicholls said the tulips and the events were all looking good for the opening in a few weeks' time.

"It is coming along nicely. We're working through the programme which we should have out at the start of next week," Ms Nicholls said.

The events include guided walks and walking tours, an outdoor crack the code event, a cup cake decorating competition, and a drop in craft making event.

Eleven different types of tulips have been planted, including exotically named varieties such as Anaconda, Kingsblood and Asahi. The festival has been reduced from nine days last year to four this year.

Tulips bloom every spring, but Ms Nicholls said it was difficult to get them all blooming at the right time if left to their own nature. By planting them each year all at the same time and at the right depth, the festival hopes they bloom at a similar time, just before it opens.

"You, of course, have these variable factors like the cold and the weather ... Some are up and some are still coming, and that's even in the same beds. It's a bit of a science and a bit of a cross your fingers kind of thing," she said.

"It's a big focus for our gardening people. They have to prepare, so far out, the beds for them to be planted, and then the actual planting, and they have to plant other things to come up before the tulips so they don't have empty beds."

Tulips have quite a storied history. In Holland, there was such demand for the flowers the resulting frenzy caused a major crash in the country's tulip market in 1637. The name comes from the Turkish word tulbent, which was from the Persian dullband, meaning turban, from its resemblance to the overlapping folds of the cloth of the garment.

All information can be found at the festival's website: tulipfestrotorua.co.nz, or the Tulip Fest Rotorua Facebook page.