As winter fades and spring awakens, the Tulip festival bursts to life with vibrant colors, fragrant blooms, and the joyful spirit of the season. With the help of Ashley Margaret, a worker up at the Ashton Gardens, we will be getting a look into the behind the scenes of the festival. On the other hand, we will be getting Ailin Martinez’s, a tulip lover, opinion on why she loves tulips and what she knows. 

Margaret is very cheerful and was happy to answer any and every question I had to ask about the festival. Starting off with how long she had been working– considering the fact that the festival is only about a month long but happens every year, she’s been helping out at the festival for four years. Margaret’s role at the tulip festival is “the best” as she puts it. Margaret walks around the field supervising, making sure no one’s doing something they’re not supposed to be doing “and while looking around for the people, I really get to look and smell all the tulips around, and through my experience I’d say the best way to really take it all in as a visitor would be to walk around and stay for over an hour to two, while following the rules of course,” she says. “There are a good amount of things we don’t let the visitors see, one of which being all the setups of the props we place and the trash left of the visitors from the day before, and if I’m being honest it’s hard to pull the bins all the way around back to the front to dump it all,” said Margaret. When asked about what they do with the tulips when the festival is over, Margaret stated that they dig them up and plant new ones and with said new ones, they create different designs each year, making each year wonderfully unique. To finish off the interview, Margaret was asked if she had a favorite memory or story from volunteering at the festival that she’d be willing to share. Her response was “Each year, we see couples, families, and friends come together to come see OUR display and every year my two favorite sightings are seeing the ladies getting proposed to and the smile they keep on their face as they enjoy the rest of the garden that will become the setting that they remember every time they tell the story, and this elderly couple John and Janet they come every year and have been longer than I’ve even been volunteering, they’re my favorite sight to see.” 

With amazing feedback from Margaret, we will move on to Martinez’s view on tulips and what they mean to her. Why does she like tulips? “Simply because in my neighborhood we have a bunch of them, and me and my siblings would steal them growing up but then my mom bought me a tulip plant and it’s just been a sentimental value in my household and in my memories,” is the response we got back from Martinez. When asked when she first fell in love with Tulips, she stated that when she was in 6th grade, her friend had picked up a tulip and gave it to her and later that day he had moved houses. Leaving that as the last thing to remember him by and ever since the tulip’s just been imprinted in her mind and heart. “I just love the way they smile at the sun,” she says. Martinez shared her experience with gardens, specifically the tulip festival in Lehi, Utah. “For two years now, we’ve been going to that festival at least twice while it’s open and the first time we made the mistake of getting there late and making it while there was only 45 minutes left before closing time. When we went the second time, we were there for almost 2 hours and it was so much easier to walk around and take in all the colors and smells instead of having to rush to try and see everything. It’s definitely better that way.”