300,000 tulips will bloom during the 2023 tulip festival in Waxahachie, Texas just 30 minutes south of Dallas.
Note: Tulipalooza 2023 was initially scheduled to begin on March 17, 2023 but the date has been advanced to March 10, 2023 as the tulips have bloomed earlier than expected.
Visit the Waxahachie Insider’s Guide to the Tulipalooza Tulip Festival for details on what’s happening this year.
With new organizers and more bulbs planted than ever, the tulip festival known as Tulipalooza has set a date for the pick-your-own-bouquet event happening in March 2023.
Time and Location
Set for 10:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. March 10 – 19, 2023, rain or shine, in a plot of land behind the Waxahachie Civic Center at 2000 Civic Center Lane in Waxahachie, Texas, the 10-day event will offer visitors a chance to stroll through rows of flowering tulips and pick their own tulip bouquet while taking unlimited Insta-worthy selfies and TikTok videos among the colorful blooms.
The final weekend in the 10-day festival will have added attractions that include giveaways, live music, food trucks and vendor booths.
Admission Fee and Other Costs
Admission to Tulipalooza 2023 is $15 per person. Children under five years old are admitted free of charge.
Senior citizens may take in the blooms on Tuesday, March 14, 2023 for the discounted ticket price of $10 per person.
Tickets may be purchased at the gate or online at tulipalooza.org.
Always a popular attraction at Tulipalooza is the chance for visitors to pick their own tulip bouquet as they stroll among the thousands of blooms. The cost for picking tulips at Tulipalooza is $2.50 per flower or $20 per bunch of 10.
Insider’s Tip: Plan to take in the festival as early in its 10 days as you can to see the most blooms before they’re picked.
Funds raised through ticket sales will support the work of 12 charities in North Texas.
About Tulipalooza
Tulipalooza was started in Waxahachie in 2019 by John Poston as a fundraising event for 12 charities, including scholarships for a local residential community that John created for intellectually and developmentally challenged adults.
Always an event centered around hundreds of thousands of blooming tulips, Tulipalloza 2023 has grown from previous years by 50,000 planted bulbs, bringing the total number of blooms up to 300,000.
Tulipalooza Event Planner Kari Lane Zerbe says John has decided to focus on other ventures and therefore handed off the festival this year to the people who worked as the consultants and crew in all previous festivals: tulip expert Bill Van Houten and Luke, Kars, and Grace Tamminga and Anneke Jones (Tamminga) — all of whom are Dutch.
“They have been with Poston Gardens since its inception,” Kari says. “We couldn’t do it without them, seeing that they know how to do tulips in Texas, since they’re not native flower to Texas. And they just wanted to see it continue. They believe in the mission of still giving back to the 12 participating charities that we have invited in. And they know how to do it. They have the machinery — [they have] four years of doing this. So they wanted to be able to take it over.”
Kari says Tulipalooza draws as many as 20,000 visitors from throughout the state to Waxahachie. This year, she’s expecting as many as 30,000 visitors to take in the tulips and then top off their visit with a sightseeing jaunt among the shops and restaurants of Downtown Waxahachie.
“We just invite people to come and see the tulips and the color and then the City of Waxahachie,” Kari says.