Cold Creek Flowers in winter is a wonderland of WINTER TULIPS!
I woke up one very cold and snowy morning and decided. I needed some flowers. The grocery store flowers made me so sad and (at the time) I didn’t know of a local florist with my same kind of flower lust. I stumbled upon this idea of growing tulips in the winter and could not wait to start! But life had other plans because a major house remodel delayed my magic winter tulips for THREE YEARS! Finally in January of 2025 I harvested my first winter tulip.
The “growing” season is short in the mountains. Shorter than the first and last frost dates for Zone 7a and unpredictable with snow in July. But winter tulips are predictable and can be scheduled to bloom at a certain time. It just made sense to try it. And to hope my neighbors were as hungry as I was for flowers in the winter.
Cold Creek Flowers is located in Clear Creek, CA near Lake Almanor. The micro-farm specializes in flowers that grow in the cold like peonies and tulips.
The dirt (soil) at Cold Creek Flowers is the result of the local forest and residential trees creating a "lasagna" (layer upon layer) of organic material that has decomposed into healthy soil. The water is from a spring creek and goes back into the local water table. Big rocks curtesy of ancient Lassen Volcano eruptions and sections of the farm where the dirt is really fine are the major things considered when deciding what to grow.
Clear Creek, or "Cold Creek" as some locals call it, is a micro-climate in the Lake Almanor region. The first to get snow and the last to have snow melt, with flowers blooming up to a month behind neighbors just 30 minutes away.
Cold Creek Flowers is creating a flower farm that is in sync with nature, does not use chemicals or synthetic products, and provides habitat for birds, bees, and butterflies.
Elizabeth is the founder of Cold Creek Flowers and admits that weeding was a punishment when she was a child. She did not have fond memories of gardening but she did have nice memories of different fruit trees in the yard while growing up. When she started growing things as an adult they were all food related or drought resistant. Elizabeth discovered cut flowers on her first trip abroad where she saw women walking with armloads of sunflowers in Italy and the magic peony in Paris. While she didn't realize it at the time, a seed had been planted for a future flower growing business.
