Thirty five acres of tulips in long striped rows with the Cascades standing behind them, then a family dairy farm that has been making ice cream from its own herd since 1968. Festival admission is in the fare. Nobody has to drive.
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Choose your own adventure: we drop you off, and the bus picks you up in the same spot.
A short, flat walk on even ground, at your own pace.
Lakeland Flowers calls itself a living canvas, and inside the gates that stops sounding like marketing. Five kilometres of tulip lined pathways wind between the rows. Baby grand pianos sit out in the open for anyone who wants to sit down and play. Painters set up easels in the middle of a field and work while you walk past.
Giant Dutch klompen, the wooden shoes, turn up at the end of pathways like punchlines. So do vintage bicycles, swings, and canoes beached in the blooms. Raised platforms let you climb up and see the whole patchwork at once, which is the photograph most people leave with.
The farm is run by the Warmerdam family and draws on Dutch flower growing tradition. It is the biggest tulip festival in Canada by any honest measure, and more than a hundred thousand people came through last season. The fields sit on the traditional, unceded territory of the Semá:th and Máthxwi First Nations, with the Cascades rising behind them.
Then fifteen minutes down the road to Birchwood Dairy, a two hundred and twenty acre farm on Sumas Prairie founded by Len and Grace Krahn in 1968 and now run by their sons. About a hundred and twenty Holsteins, milk turned into ice cream on site, a country kitchen doing soups and sandwiches, a calf barn out the back and mountain views over the fields. It is a slow ending to a very loud day of colour.
Loud colour first, then something cold and quiet.
The fields first, while the light is good and you still have energy for five kilometres of pathway. Then somewhere to sit down with an ice cream.
We pick you up
In front of the Bentall Centre Courtyard, where you will also see a TD Bank. Get there fifteen minutes early so there is time to check in.
The tulip festival itself. Long deliberate rows of doubles, fringed varieties and parrot tulips, with the North Cascades standing behind the fields. Open air pianos, painters at work, giant wooden klompen, swings, vintage bicycles and raised platforms to see it all from above. Your admission is part of the fare.
Good to know:
Facilities: Food trucks on site every day of the festival, Washrooms, Mostly flat farm track pathways
Note: The festival runs sunrise to sunset, rain or shine. Soft overcast light is what photographers prefer anyway, but bring boots if it has rained.
A working dairy farm fifteen minutes from the fields. Milk from a herd of about a hundred and twenty Holsteins goes into more than fifty rotating flavours of ice cream made on site at sixteen percent butterfat. There is a country kitchen for soups, sandwiches and baked goods, a country store, a calf barn out the back, vintage tractors and the mountains over the fields.
Good to know:
Facilities: Country kitchen and country store, Washrooms, An observation room where the cows are milked in the late afternoon
Note: The petting zoo is seasonal and usually opens later in spring, so an early season departure may find it closed. The calf barn, store, ice cream and views are open regardless.
We drop you back
The bus returns to the same place it left from, so you go home the way you came.
This is our estimated return time, not a guarantee. Traffic can change it and some trips do run late, so please leave yourself some room afterwards rather than booking something tight against it.
Short list. The weather decides most of it.
The festival is timed to peak bloom and runs for about three weeks in spring, moved by the weather each year. Seventy varieties open in waves, so there is nearly always something at its best.
Lakeland keep a bloom chart on their website and update it through the season. Worth a look the week before you travel.
These are farm fields. The pathways are flat, but after rain they are mud, and the fields are wide open with no shelter.
Rubber boots are the right answer if it has rained in the days before. Layers too, because spring in the Fraser Valley can go from warm sun to cold wind inside an hour.
Lakeland Flowers and Birchwood Dairy both sit on the traditional, unceded territory of the Stó:lō Peoples, including the Semá:th and Máthxwi First Nations, the original caretakers of this land.
This one runs for about three weeks in spring, timed to peak bloom and moved by the weather each year.
Placeholder dates · the real ones come from our booking system
We are Canada's outdoor bus service. Since 2010 we've taken more than 300,000 people to parks and trails without a car. You bring a camera. We handle everything with wheels.
Thirty five acres of tulips in long striped rows, with the North Cascades behind them. Doubles, fringed varieties and parrot tulips with petals that look torn by hand.
Festival admission is part of the fare, so you walk off the coach and straight through the gate. Food trucks are on site every day of the festival.
Birchwood Dairy has been milking on Sumas Prairie since 1968 and makes more than fifty flavours on site from its own herd, at sixteen percent butterfat.
A hundred thousand people came through last season. You arrive on a coach, get out at the gate, and never think about a field full of cars.
★★★★★ 4.6/5.0 on Google
“Highly recommend them for Joffre’s Lake or even Golden Ears/Garibaldi trip. The bus service is so useful for people who doesn’t want to drive and gives return facility. They were on time and bus facility was good too. Total worth the cost if you want to avoid hassle driving/parking.”Sidhant Duggal · Facebook · Aug 2022
This is a great service if you don't have a vehicle or just don't want to drive. I'm so happy to have discovered this. There will definitely be more Parkbus trips in my future!James Taylor Wilson · Happy Parkbus customer
Speaking from someone who doesn't drive. This is a must!! I highly recommend this!Linda Ann · Facebook · Jun 2024
Cancel more than 14 days before departure and you get a 90% refund, with 10% withheld for payment processing. Inside 14 days refunds are not available, except for a medical emergency in the 48 hours before departure, which needs a signed doctor’s note within 14 days of the missed trip and returns 50%. Tickets are transferable: you can change the passenger name up to 48 hours before departure.
If Parkbus cancels a trip, you get a full refund. We decide no later than 48 hours before departure and only on confirmed conditions: the park closed or the park authority asking us to stand down, an evacuation order or alert, an area restriction order, the highway closed, or the trip judged unsafe to run. A forecast is not one of those things, and trips run rain or shine.
An hour from downtown, and the only thing you have to organise is which flavour.
Not quite the right fit? These all leave from the same spot downtown.
