Visit Baker Creek for the Annual Flower Festival

At only an hour from Springfield via Highway 60, the small town of Mansfield is home to Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. The company was founded by Jere Gettle in 1998 and has grown by leaps and bounds ever since. Across scenic acres in Mansfield, Baker Creek has swaths of veggie fields, a shop selling seed packets and other goodies, a vegan restaurant serving dishes made from grown-on-site ingredients and—my favorite part—a rainbow of tulips that sprout up all around the property in early spring. And along with it comes the seed company’s annual Spring Flower Festival.

The festival takes place on April 6–7 this year and features numerous vendors peppered around the property amid all the blossoming tulips, selling handcrafted items and plants. You can purchase freshly arranged bouquets, take a tour of the greenhouses and gardens, hear guest speakers give talks on gardening and other topics, listen to live bluegrass music and more. The Spring Flower Festival is free, but guests are required to purchase a parking pass at $15 per vehicle.

And here’s a hot tip for anybody who wants to stroll among the tulips but doesn’t want to attend the festival: Those tulips keep on blooming before and after the event. So you can visit Baker Creek on your own time to see them. I have visited a few times on days just prior to the festival. I ate at the restaurant, snapped dozens of photos of the wide variety of blooming tulips, stocked up on loads of seed packets for my home garden and even nabbed a few jars of pickles. It was a great way to see the scenic beauty of the farm in spring, even though I wasn’t able to make it to the festival.

No matter which way you do it—festival or not—a visit to Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company during tulip season is a must. The rainbow of blooms is an instant mood lifter.