It’s almost Tulip Time in Holland. No, not the one in the Netherlands, but the 80-year-old festival in Holland, Michigan! The annual celebration of the town’s Dutch heritage and culture is set for May 1 through 8, 2010.

The poster for this year’s festival (that’s it, at left) is from an original watercolor by Randall Higdon called “Reaching for Light”. His inspiration came from tulips he saw in Centennial Park during a previous Tulip Time Festival. The tulip variety depicted comes from the Lily Flowering Tulip Family and is called White Triumphator.

Of course there are parades and entertainment and fireworks and a carnival and a Dutch Marktplaats, but we Road Trips Gardeners are more interested in the tulips — and there are about a half a million of them planted along the six-mile-long Tulip Lane through Holland. There are another 150,000 at Windmill Island Gardens, plus 20,000 at Nelis’ Dutch Village.

The Tulip Time brochure gives a map of the Tulip Lane, plus other places in town planted with the Dutch bulb.