MOUNT VERNON — Better to show up sooner than later at this year's Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The winter's unseasonably warm weather means the bloom could be off the rows before the end of the month.

Scheduling a festival around the whims of Mother Nature is risky. And that's always the case for the region's annual tulip love affair, which began yesterday and continues through April 30.

"We struggle with it every year," said Brent Roozen, a third-generation grower for the family behind Roozengaarde, one of the festival's two most popular stops. "We can't do anything to control them."

ALAN BERNER/ THE SEATTLE TIMES The Red Hat Chicks of Bellingham came out in style for the annual festival in the Skagit Valley.

This season's tulips at Roozengaarde began poking through the ground in December and January, which was way too early if they were to peak during the festival. Cooler weather prevailed later in the winter, however, which slowed their growth. Roozen said the current chill should help prolong the period of bloom.

As it is, though, Skagit Valley tulips are blooming about a week ahead of schedule. Typically, the tulips start showing color around April 3 to 5 and stick around for two or three weeks. This year, the bloom began Easter weekend.

Visitors who christened the festival yesterday morning nevertheless saw quite a show, with Roozengaarde's fields displaying their color in full glory under an overcast sky that provided optimal light for photographs.

"I'm here with visitors from California who are freezing off their you-know-whats, but I love it," said Candace Gordon, of Kirkland, while taking a photo of a sea of color. "Getting out in wide-open spaces like this is such a wonderful contrast to my everyday routine of working downtown. It's so serene here, so tranquil."

Like many festival-goers, Gordon planned to make a day of it. In addition to flower gazing and tulip shopping, the festival offers a wide range of other events, including art shows, salmon barbecues and community garage sales.

In addition to fields of tulips, Roozengaarde and neighboring Tulip Town offer display gardens featuring exotics and showy varieties that are, frankly, not your garden-variety tulips.

Rubber boots weren't a bad idea for those traipsing through the fields yesterday. Nevertheless, visitors usually were able to sidestep mud puddles and find dry patches, except for Isaiah Wilkie, of Kenmore, who is 2 ½. The little boy splashed and frolicked in the puddles and did a face-plant or two after he lost his footing.

"It's fun with the kids," said Erin Wilkie, who with her husband, Tim, also had their 9-year-old and 15-month-old in tow. "They may not understand the magnitude of it all, but I love the picture opportunities."

For the Roozens, who manage nine tulip fields across about 300 acres, beauty also is a business. At some point during the festival, the family will go into the fields with a tractor and plow and top the tulips. The cut flowers will fall between the rows and create a different kind of color motif. The topping, done while the petals are still healthy, promotes the growth of the bulbs.

Roozen said festival-goers often tend to not understand why the field, in their eyes, is being destroyed and perfectly good flowers go to waste.

"By topping it, you allow all the energy to go back into the bulb," Roozen said.

The vast majority of the Roozens' business is from shipping the bulbs, not selling the flowers, although the family does market greenhouse tulips year-round. Less than 1 percent of the field crop is harvested to sell as cut flowers during the festival.

Roozengaarde is the retail division of Washington Bulb Co., which is online at www.tulips.com.

Inside the Roozengaarde gift shop and under an outdoor tent set up for the festival, customers picked from among a wide variety of tulips.

Roozen said the best sellers tend to be the most basic, with the Ile de France, which is red-rose red, and the Negrita, a medium-shade purple, probably the most popular.

"There are so many colors," said Rebecca Lin, who boarded a tour bus at 7 a.m. yesterday from Vancouver, B.C., to attend the festival. She settled on "pink, for the little girl," referring to daughter Joyce, 10. "I would buy a second bunch, but there are too many choices."

Lin said her tour bus planned a stop at the outlet mall in Burlington, Skagit County, on the way home. Because of such business, the manager of the outlet mall refers to the tulip festival as the "second coming of Christmas," said Cindy Verge, executive director of the tulip festival.

An economic-impact study, done in 2000 when the festival lasted 17 days instead of a full month, estimated that the festival brings $14 million into the Skagit Valley, Verge said.

Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or seskenazi@seattletimes.com

IF YOU GO

If you go

The 22nd- annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Dates: Now through April 30

Phone: 360-428-5959

Directions: Off Interstate 5, take exits 221 to 236. All of these exits have tulip-festival brochures at the nearest businesses.

What to do: The fields are spread out over a 15-mile radius, and events occur throughout Skagit County.

On the web: See www.tulipfestival.org for event schedule and maps.

Growers' fields and display gardens:

Roozengaarde

Address: 15867 Beaver Marsh Road, Mount Vernon

Hours: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Phones: 800-732-3266 or 360-424-8531

Admission: $2, children 5 and under are free; no pets

Parking: Free

On the Web: www.tulips.com

Tulip Town

Address: 15002 Bradshaw Road, Mount Vernon

Hours: 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

Phone: 360-424-8152

Admission: $4, children 16 and under free; no pets

Parking: Free

On the Web: www.tuliptown.com

Source: Skagit Valley Tulip Festival