Every year in early spring, Burnside Farms in Nokesville holds a Holland-style tulip festival.
While it was the first pick-your-own tulip festival in North America, and remains one of the largest, that was not the original vision for the farm. A series of happy accidents and a willingness to say “yes” to opportunity led to a blooming agritourism business for the Dawley family of Northern Virginia.
In 1995, the late David Dawley and his wife, Leslie, now in her 70s, had a growing florist business in Chantilly. Needing a larger supply of freshly grown flowers, they bought Burnside Farms in Haymarket, a 15-acre historic property near James S. Long Park and Route 15. It became a growing, shipping and receiving site for their business.
During those early years, Burnside Farms grew over 100 varieties of specialty-cut flowers, including tulips, dahlias, sunflowers and daffodils, for florists and other wholesale accounts.
The enterprise became a family affair, involving Leslie’s mother, Majorie Raney and David and Leslie’s children: Michael, Katie and Daniel, then ages 16, 12 and 8, respectively. After David passed away in 2003, three generations continued to manage the farm.
By 2010, Burnside Farms was growing potted plants for garden centers. Like many roadside farms it also held seasonal festivals. Then, one day, a bigger opportunity arose.
“In the fall of 2011, our bulb supplier was going out of business and offered us a deal on 35,000 tulip bulbs that we couldn’t refuse,” Leslie said. “Thirty-five thousand bulbs was probably 34,000 more than we needed for our spring plants.”
Leslie convinced her son Michael to seize the opportunity. “We decided to plant them in our one-acre field and open up in the spring with pick-your-own tulips. It would be a pretty sight to see so many blooming tulips.”
In spring 2012, they sent an email to their subscriber list of about 500 customers, letting them know about our tulip festival.
The tulip fields were too beautiful to ignore.
“The response was incredible,” Leslie said. “From the very moment we opened, we knew we were on to something special. With the help of social media and our visitors’ posting photos of their visit, it was an instant success. As the tulips began to emerge early spring 2013, so too did the excitement on social media.”
Burnside Farm’s social media feeds exploded with anticipation of the flowers blooming.
The most frequently asked question they received was, “what’s next?” The Dawleys decided to launch the “Summer of Sunflowers,” another annual festival in July and August each year.
By fall 2013, they knew they couldn’t continue to plant by hand and bought a custom-built flower-bulb planter from Holland. That year, they planted 250,000 daffodil and tulip bulbs.
And after another incredible season, they had outgrown their small home farm, so they leased an additional 20 acres in Haymarket, allowing them to plant six acres with spring flowers.
In 2015, the Dawleys planted 550,000 bulbs, Leslie said. “Through the power of social media and word of mouth, we saw a staggering increase in visitors.”
In 2016, they set another lofty goal: to plant 1 million flower bulbs. And now they plant more than 2 million bulbs each year.
Maria and Liam Cavendish came from Ashburn to pick tulips at Burnside Farms last Monday.
Photographer: Luke Christopher
BURNSIDE FARMS TODAY
Since 2018, Burnside Farms’s tulip field and Festival of Spring has been on 70 acres along Kettle Run Road in Nokesville. The Festival of Spring has grown in size, scope and attendance.
And today, Leslie, “Mike” and his wife, Jess, of Centreville, own and operate Burnside Farms (although they lease the Kettle Run fields.)
“Mike and I started dating in 2007 and got married in 2014,” Jess said. “We also have two beautiful children – Nolan, 10, and Annabelle, 8 – who both love to help out on the farm as much as they can.”
People come from all over the Washington region to see the vibrant fields of red, orange, yellow. white, and violet tulips and yellow daffodils.
“The tulip fields are absolutely gorgeous,” Jess said. “It just looks like a carpet of gorgeous, vibrant colors. It’s just breathtaking,”
The fields now include photo op spots, picnic tables and a new 4,000 square foot tulip- and sunflower-themed playground. Food trucks and beer and/or wine vendors are usually present on weekends, and sometimes there is even a live band.
“We provide more than just a place to come see and pick flowers,” Jess said. “We want to provide something to our guests that they can really consider an experience.”
And there is no typical visitor to the tulip festival.
“We draw a very diverse crowd,” Jess said, “families looking for a fun outing with their kids; teens, 20-somethings and influencers who are posting photos or videos on their social media pages, and young couples on dates.”
People even propose on the tulip field. “It’s very exciting when we get proposals on the farm and that happens fairly frequently.”
Burnside Farms typically holds its Festival of Spring in late March through early April, but weather conditions can affect the flower harvest. But when the festival is open for tulip season – visitors will know. The farm is bustling.
As the festival grew, the Dawleys made adjustments.
Rather than allowing people to pick bulbs – which disrupts the flower beds – they sell high-quality bulbs in bulk. The seasonal store also sells vases, local jams and jellies and artisan-made souvenirs.
They also switched to online ticket sales with designated dates and times for entry.
“We reached a point where we needed to set a daily capacity to avoid overcrowding,” Jess said. “Online ticketing helps us manage that capacity, and it helps visitors, too – people can check availability ahead of time and avoid making the drive only to find we’re sold out and can’t accommodate more guests.”
Burnside Farms also offers “Season Passports,” inviting people to visit often, “because the fields are constantly changing.”
The stunning setting captured on camera helped the festival grow organically. “We’ve never had a marketing budget,” Jess explained. “People find out about us from word of mouth, articles in local – or sometimes nationwide – publications and through social media.”
However, Burnside Farms does promote its Summer of Sunflower festival, with hopes of growing that festival to similar renown. A major attraction is the farm’s “Sunflower Sunset” foam Friday dance parties and Saturday night concerts.
Now Burnside Farms is neither a flower wholesaler nor a garden center but a major agritourism business that four generations of Dawleys continue to grow.
“Burnside Farms is special because we always go the extra mile to provide our guests with a little something unexpected,” Jess said. “We have guests that return year after year and we manage to give them a bit of a new experience each time.”
Stacy Shaw is an award-winning journalist. She is the editor of Haymarket/Gainesville Lifestyle Magazine and publisher/owner of the local news site Bristow Beat.com.
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