CARLSBAD — The blooming giant tecolote ranunculus have returned to brighten their familiar hillside home.
“I mean, we’re probably biased,” said Taylor Moss, marketing and operations manager for The Flower Fields. “But we consider it the most ‘Instagrammable’ place in San Diego.”
The annual tradition opened March 1, with around a third of the flowers in bloom on the 55-acre farm. Full bloom for the roughly 80 million flowers typically occurs between late March and early May, culminating in a Mother’s Day celebration, though The Flower Fields’ schedule can vary based on weather conditions or other factors.
Ranunculus do not pollinate like typical flowers. Moss said she often fields questions from people worried about allergies or bees when visiting the fields, but because the flowers do not produce nectar, they do not attract bees, birds or butterflies.
“They’re pollinated by the wind,” she said. “So we rely literally on Mother Nature and the wind to do a lot of work for us.”
The Flower Fields feature a full slate of activities, including musical performances, attractions and floral workshops.
The Fields of Luck 5K offers participants the opportunity to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by running, or rambling, a course through rows of The Flower Fields — which cover more surface area than 40 football fields — before the gates open to the public on March 15.
New this year will be a cherry-red Studebaker farm truck pop-up scheduled to host a rotating assortment of local culinary offerings.
The expanded butterfly encounter offers visitors the opportunity to observe and experience the winged insects up close and, Moss said, “again, probably get a great picture.”
“It’s a pretty cool thing to see and experience,” she said. “A lot of people don’t experience wildlife right up close. Flowers are living nature, but this is really living nature.”
Overall, Moss said that despite being close to Interstate 5 and busy shopping and residential areas, walking through The Flower Fields feels like “you’ve transported yourself into a different world.”
“It allows people to just kind of have an escape from their daily life,” she said. “It’s really an emotional kind of experience that people go through when they come to the fields. I mean, yes, it’s a really fun day out, but I think it just changes their mindset once they get in there. They might be stressed or having a hard morning, and then you walk into this massive display of nature.
“And I don’t know, people are always smiling when they leave.”
