The stars of the annual La Conner Daffodil Festival are finally ready for their closeup.
“Our phones are ringing off the hook,” said Mark Hulst, director of the La Conner Chamber of Commerce. “People want to know where to see the daffodils.”
Roozengaarde’s online Bloom Map shows seven fields on La Conner Whitney, Best, Beaver Marsh, and Calhoun roads. While each day brings more yellow, “daffodils will be in full bloom when it says spring on the calendar,” said Brent Roozen, who manages Washington Bulb Company’s Roozengaarde display garden. He expects that full bloom will last March 21 through the first part of April.
In 2024, warm weather teased out blooms in early March. 2025 daffodils are later but larger.
“Three weeks earlier means three weeks less to grow,” Roozen explained. “When given more time to grow, they stretch and grow bigger flowers.”
These 350-acre carpets of yellow are more than beautiful. They are a livelihood. Along with fall bulb sales, cut flowers are a key revenue source for Washington Bulb, although demand for this long-lasting, affordable flower is decreasing.
“It just hasn’t been as popular,” says Roozen. “Some of the big buyers have just gone away from it.” Sales are strong in stores in the Northwest, Canada, and the Chicago area, said Roozen, but in East Coast grocery stores, “you’re competing with a lighter, slightly cheaper flower flown in from Holland.”
“Ours are better, though,” he added.
National climate uneasy for farmworkers
Daffodils also support the laborers who cut them. Nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, about two in five immigrant farmworkers are not legally authorized to work in the United States. “There is a lot of fear and anxiety as farmworkers return to the fields, “ said longtime La Conner resident and farmworker activist Rosalinda Guillen. “They are feeling insecure about how long they will be able to receive a paycheck.”
Despite talk of arrests and deportations, applications to cut daffodils were way up this year, Roozen said.
Photo by Nancy K. Crowell/La Conner Community News
That’s no surprise to Guillen.
“Cutting bulbs is the first harvest of the season in Skagit County, a very natural process of farmworkers being able to make a living and survive economically,” she explained. “The cycle starts with daffs, then tulips into May, then strawberries in the first part of June, then raspberries and blueberries and blackberries that go on until September or October. Then there’s a one-month winter break until pruning begins.”
Farmers and workers alike depend on this cycle, and workers tend to return to the same farms every year. Will deportations and detentions interrupt or break that cycle? Guillen hopes not.
“People have to go to work, but they are worried.”
The daffodil-fundraising connection
For the La Conner Kiwanis, daffodils mean more funds for student scholarships and support for places like Camp Korey. They deliver bunches weekly to about 90 percent of First Street businesses.
“Our customers really like this year’s flowers,” said former Kiwanis president Pat Clausen. “One shop owner told me that people thought they weren’t real because they were so big.”
On March 21, the Kiwanis will select a Daffodil King and Queen from the La Conner Elementary School fifth grade class. The Festival photo contest, a fixture since 2015, continues, and as usual the winning image will adorn the 2026 Festival poster.
Otherwise, the 2025 Daffodil Festival calendar is light on events, said Hulst, in part due to Maple Hall floor repairs.
Like daffodils, tulips are likely to bloom later in April — although one warm week can speed things up, Roozen noted.
Strong demand for cut tulips will mean steady work for the people who cut them.
The April 5 Tulip Festival Parade in La Conner will include the Daffodil Pet Parade, presented by La Conner Thrives Association. The Daffodil King and Queen will participate, too.
Kiwanis daffodil sales will give way to Rotary tulip sales.
Once Ollie Iverson’s tulip sales crew is up and running, two shifts of Rotarians will “man” booths at the roundabout and O’Donnell’s seven days a week.
“If you want to help by spending time in a tulip booth, we have one waiting for you,” Iverson said.
Anne Basye is a freelance writer based in greater La Conner.
