For six weeks every spring, the largest tulip display between the coasts opens on a hillside in Lehi, and the whole Wasatch Front goes to look at it. The Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point fills the 50-acre Ashton Gardens with roughly 400,000 tulips imported from Holland and more than half a million other spring bulbs — daffodils, hyacinths, poppies, English daisies — planted in the fall in beds designed so that something is in bloom every day of the window. It has run since the mid-2000s, it has won the state's tourism award for it more than a decade running, and on a peak Saturday it is the most crowded place in Utah County.
This guide is the festival explained: when it runs and how the dates are set, how the timed tickets and the peak/off-peak pricing work and why a membership changes the math, when the tulips actually peak inside the six weeks and how to read the bloom updates, the Saturday crowd problem and the weekday solution, the 5K and the classes and the golf-cart tours, what the garden's hills mean for a stroller, the closed-Sunday rule, and where to eat. Our Ashton Gardens guide covers the garden across the year — the waterfall, the costs, the rest of the seasons — and the Thanksgiving Point guide covers the whole complex; this page is the festival. Dates and prices below are from Thanksgiving Point's published 2026 pages and press releases and are hedged: the 2027 dates are announced in the winter, and the festival's own page is the source.
What It Is
The Ashton Gardens are Thanksgiving Point's formal garden: fifteen themed gardens on a hillside above the Jordan River at the north end of Utah County, with a long descent past a waterfall to a lake at the bottom and a climb back up, all of it landscaped, paved and — for six weeks in spring — planted wall to wall with bulbs. The festival is what the garden does with that planting: it opens the beds at peak, adds music and vendors on the busy days, sells classes and tours, runs a 5K through the paths, and charges festival admission for the window.
The numbers the venue publishes: more than a million flowers across the garden, of which 400,000 are tulips of every shape and color and roughly 550,000 are the other spring bulbs; dozens of varieties, with new ones introduced each year (2026's press named three new tulip varieties and nearly 100,000 additional flowers over the prior year); 50 acres; six weeks. Thanksgiving Point calls it Utah's only tulip festival, which is true, and one of the largest in the nation, which is defensible.
When It Runs
Thanksgiving Point announces the following spring's dates in the winter — the 2026 dates were public by February 1 — and the pattern over the festival's two decades is stable enough to plan around:
- 2022: April 7 – May 13
- 2024: April 10 – May 18 (the twentieth festival)
- 2026: April 6 – May 16
Six weeks, opening in the first or second week of April, closing in the middle of May, Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed every Sunday. The 2027 festival will follow that shape; its exact dates will be on the venue's page by early in the year, and a family that books travel around this festival should wait for the announcement rather than assume.
The Sunday closure is not a festival rule; it is Thanksgiving Point's rule for the whole complex, every week of the year. During the festival it means the weekend is one day long, and that fact is the root of the crowd problem.
Tickets, Pricing and the Membership Math
Time-ticketed. Admission is sold for a specific date and entry window, online, in advance, and the garden limits entries per window. Once inside, a guest can stay until close. Walk-up tickets are sold on days that have not sold out, and the peak Saturdays sell out.
Peak and off-peak. The pricing splits by day: Fridays and Saturdays are peak, weekdays are off-peak, and the peak-bloom weeks push the whole scale up. The published range in recent years was about $17 to $29 per adult, with reduced rates for children, seniors and military; the venue's page has the current grid.
Members. Thanksgiving Point members (the annual membership that covers the museums and the gardens) enter the festival free Monday through Friday, at half price on Saturdays, and can exchange dates if plans change. For a Utah Valley family that will visit twice — and the garden in week one and week five is two different gardens — the membership is usually cheaper than two sets of festival tickets, and it covers the Butterfly Biosphere, the dinosaur museum, the Museum of Natural Curiosity and the farm for the rest of the year. Check the membership price against the festival grid before buying tickets; the venue's own blog makes the same point.
Classes and tours. The festival's classes — floral design, centerpiece and bouquet workshops, watercolor, floral photography, flower pressing, garden yoga — are priced separately, from about $50 to $160 in 2026, with festival admission included in the class fee. The chauffeured golf-cart tours on Tuesday and Thursday mornings are the premium way to see the garden without the climb, and they book out. The Tulip 5K is a separate race registration.
When the Tulips Peak
This is the question every visitor asks and the venue cannot answer in February, because the answer is the spring's.
The garden plants for succession: early bulbs (daffodils, hyacinths, the earliest tulip varieties) open the festival in the first week, mid-season tulips fill the middle, and late tulips and poppies close it. Something is in flower every day of the six weeks; the press photographs — the big beds all open at once, the color solid to the horizon — are from the middle two weeks, when the mid-season varieties peak and the early ones have not yet faded. In a normal Utah spring that lands in the last week of April into the first week of May. A warm spring pulls it a week earlier; a cold, wet one (and the valley has them) pushes it a week later and can leave the opening week looking sparse.
Thanksgiving Point posts bloom updates on its social feeds through the festival — its own guide tells visitors to check Instagram because the timing varies — and those updates are the only reliable way to time a visit. A family that can go midweek should watch the updates and go the week the garden says "peak." A family locked into a date should go anyway; even the shoulder weeks have hundreds of thousands of flowers open, and the garden's other plantings carry the edges.
The Crowd Problem and the Weekday Solution
On a peak Saturday the Tulip Festival is the busiest place in Utah County. The parking lots along Garden Drive fill and overflow; the entry windows are sold out days ahead; the main path through the big beds is shoulder to shoulder; the photo spots — the waterfall overlook, the Italian garden, the big tulip lawns — have lines; and the climb back up the hill at 2 p.m. is a slow procession of wagons. It is still beautiful. It is not calm.
The solution is a weekday morning. Tuesday or Wednesday at the 9 a.m. window is a different garden: near-empty paths, the light at its best before the sun gets high, room to photograph the beds without a stranger in the frame, and — for a member — free. Thursday is nearly as good. Friday is in between. Monday is the quietest of the peak-price days because the weekend crowd has just left.
If Saturday is the only option: buy the earliest window, arrive before it opens, park in the first lot and walk, and go to the far end of the garden first — down the hill to the waterfall and the lake — while the crowd is still clustered at the entrance beds. Come back up through the big beds after 1 p.m. when the morning crowd has started to leave. Eat before or after, not at the garden's peak lunch hour.
The Garden's Hills: A Note for Strollers and Wheelchairs
The Ashton Gardens are on a hillside, and the festival loop is a long descent to the waterfall and the lake and a long climb back. The main paths are paved and a stroller or wheelchair can do the loop; the shortcuts between levels are stairs; and the climb out is real — long enough that the venue rents wagons at the entrance and has run a shuttle on the garden road on busy days for guests who need it. The practical advice for a family with a toddler: rent the wagon, do the descent first while everyone is fresh, plan a two-hour visit, and accept that the climb out at the end is the part the parents will remember. Our garden guide has more on the waterfall and the layout.
The 5K, the Music and the Rest
The Tulip 5K runs through the garden's paths on a Saturday morning in late April (April 25 in 2026; April 27 in 2024), before the garden opens to the day's ticket holders, and it is the prettiest 5K in the valley by a distance — our race calendar lists it among the April anchors. It sells out; registration opens in the winter with the festival dates.
Live music, vendors and food trucks run on the peak Fridays and Saturdays, on the lawns near the entrance, and give the busy days a festival feel that the weekday visits do not have. The garden's own restaurant and café are open on all festival days.
Play stations for children — the venue's word — are set up in the garden on festival days, and the farm and museums across the road turn a garden visit into a full day for a family with a membership.
Photographers should know that professional and portrait sessions in the garden are subject to Thanksgiving Point's photography policy, which has required a permit or a fee for commercial and portrait work; the venue's page states the current rule. Phone photography for a family's own use is unrestricted and is most of what happens.
What to Bring, and What to Leave
Bring: comfortable shoes for the hills, a hat and sunscreen (the garden has little shade in the bulb beds and the April sun at 4,500 feet is stronger than it feels), water, a wagon rental or a plan to get one, and the ticket on a phone with a charged battery, because the entry scan is at the gate. Layers, because an April morning at 9 is in the 40s and the same afternoon can be 70. Leave: the dog (not permitted in the gardens), the drone (not permitted), and the picnic in the beds — the venue asks guests to eat in the designated areas, and the lawns near the entrance are where the food trucks are.
Where It Sits in the Valley's Spring
The Tulip Festival is the anchor of Utah Valley's spring calendar, and it lines up with several other things worth knowing. It usually opens a week or two after Easter in a March-Easter year (2027: Easter is March 28; the festival will likely open in the first week or so of April) and overlaps it in a late-April-Easter year. It overlaps the April general conference weekend, when the valley's own families are home watching sessions and the garden's Saturday is lighter than usual — a quiet tip for visitors from out of state. Its 5K sits in the April race weekend alongside the Blossom Run in Santaquin's orchards. And its closing weeks overlap the first weekend of May, when the Provo City Half runs and the valley's own fruit orchards in the south county are in bloom.
For a visitor from out of state, the festival is the reason to come in spring, and Lehi's other attractions — the museums across the road, the outlets, the canyon drives that open in May — fill the rest of a weekend. Our Lehi guide has the lodging; the hotels at Thanksgiving Point itself sell festival packages.
Eating Before and After
The garden's café and restaurant are open on festival days and are fine; the better meal is in Lehi. Our Lehi restaurant guide covers the choices, and the pattern for a garden day is breakfast before the 9 a.m. window (the Lehi Main Street places open early), or a late lunch after the climb out at 1 or 2 p.m., when the restaurants near the Thanksgiving Point exit have turned over their noon crowd. On a Saturday, book anything with a wait; on a weekday, walk in.
A Plan for Each Kind of Visitor
The local family with a membership: three visits. Week one on a weekday for the daffodils and the early beds, the peak week on a Tuesday morning for the photographs, and week six on a Saturday evening for the poppies and the music, when the crowd has thinned and the light is low. Free, free and half price.
The local without a membership: one visit, the peak week, a weekday morning, the 9 a.m. window, two hours, lunch in Lehi after. Watch the bloom updates for the week.
The out-of-state visitor: come in the last week of April or the first week of May, stay near Thanksgiving Point, do the garden on a weekday morning and the museums in the afternoon, and use the Saturday for the canyons. If Saturday is the only garden day, the earliest window and the far-end-first route.
The runner: the Tulip 5K in late April, then the garden as a walk-down with the medal.
The photographer: a weekday at the 9 a.m. window in the peak week, the waterfall first for the morning light, the big beds by 11, and a return at the 6 p.m. window for the low light if the ticket allows re-entry (ask; the policy has varied).
The Short Version
The Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point runs six weeks each spring in the Ashton Gardens in Lehi — early April to mid-May, Monday through Saturday, 9 to 8, closed Sundays; 2026 was April 6 to May 16 and the 2027 dates will be announced in the winter. It is time-ticketed with peak and off-peak pricing (about $17 to $29 in recent years); members enter free on weekdays and half price on Saturdays, which makes a membership the better buy for two visits. The tulips peak in the middle two weeks, usually late April into early May, and the venue's bloom updates are the only way to time it. Saturdays are the crowd; a Tuesday morning at 9 is the answer. Rent the wagon, do the descent first, and plan the climb out. And go more than once if you can, because the garden in week one and week six is two different festivals.
Related Guides
- Ashton Gardens at Thanksgiving Point: What It Costs, What's Open, and the Waterfall Problem
- Thanksgiving Point: The Complete Visitor Guide
- Luminaria at Thanksgiving Point: The Light Walk, Explained
- Easter Weekend in Utah Valley
- Things to Do in Lehi, Utah
- 14 Best Restaurants in Lehi
- Butterfly Biosphere: Utah's Only Butterfly Conservatory
- Running Races in Utah Valley: The Annual Calendar
Frequently Asked Questions
When is the Tulip Festival in 2027?
How do tickets work?
When do the tulips actually peak?
How bad are the crowds, and how do I avoid them?
Is the garden stroller- and wheelchair-friendly?
What else happens during the festival?
Why is Thanksgiving Point closed on Sundays?
Is it worth the drive from Provo, or from Salt Lake?
