Waterdrinker Tulip Festival blooms in Riverhead and Manorville this spring

By Ellen YanSpecial to NewsdayUpdated April 22, 2025 4:06 pm

A cash crop colors vast fields, reflecting a “mania” that once gripped the 17th century Netherlands and now, in a gentler hold, the work team at Waterdrinker Farm.

The annual Tulip Festival, which officially begins April 19 and runs through mid-May, celebrates the story of a flower whose popularity has endured through the centuries. This year, there will be more blooms than ever, almost 2 million, at the farm’s Riverhead and Manorville locations. Manorville’s festival opens April 19 and Riverhead’s is still to be determined, with blooms dependent on how warm the weather is.

"It’s a rainbow of color," farm co-owner Marc Weiss says. "People are interested in the history of it and the culture of it. It originated in Holland, so maybe it just takes people to a different place. It’s almost like a staycation on Long Island."

The theme this year is "Tulip Mania," a period when the bulb’s value soared during the 1600s as Holland’s trade fortunes increased before it collapsed, much like the real estate bubble of 20 years ago. Artistic displays, makeshift museums in a greenhouse and a silo highlight olden times when the tulip was so venerated, the bulbs were used as money. Having a canvas portrait with this flower somewhere in the painting was a sign of affluence and influence. Its saturated colors made the tulip an in-demand status symbol in many parts of Europe.

But how the Dutch carried around bulbous cash has given one farmhand’s imagination a blooming time when people unearth and carry home as many Waterdrinker bulbs as they can after the tulip season.

"People come in with wagons and baskets … and I often think of the 17th century," says Tim McHeffey, 67, an operations assistant and business professor, "I often think ‘could this be close to what it looked like back then?’ "

Weiss concedes he’s got a bit of his own tulip addiction, or at least Holland on his mind. The Tulip Tunnel makeshift museum — with a big picture poster greeting card display, a windmill mock-up and a barnlike floor of hay and dirt — shows off the Dutch Delft reproduction dishware he found while antique hunting. He enjoys knowing that something called the tulip-breaking virus causes beautiful streaks of color on the petals, particularly red and white.

Last year, he was like a tulip scientist. He orders millions of new bulbs every year from Holland because the word in the industry is that second-generation bulbs that spring from the mother plant aren’t as good.

So he planted 50,000 of his second-generation bulbs at the Manorville farm, next to new bulbs from Holland.

"We wanted to see is this really the truth? Will they not come up strong?" Weiss recounts. "We had this whole field that just didn’t look great like the rest of the field. They weren’t as strong. They weren’t as tall. They weren’t as vibrant."

Visitors to the Tulip Festival, held since 2019, can feel like they’re experiencing a less complicated time when many more folks were farmers. There will be simpler pleasures, such as pedaling toy tractors around a small track, sitting in lawn chairs amid a rainbow of flowers and meeting farm animals.

"When people come in, they tell us ‘I come back every season,’ “ McHeffey says. "We don’t show them a good time. They really make their own good time. It is a throwback to a simpler time."

SELFIE OPS

Giant clogs and lawn chairs return as selfie ops, but what’s new are wooden displays as tall as 7 feet of Dutch girls, tulips and windmills, all set out among the fields of tulips. These are the ideas of the "Waterdrinker Waterthinkers," a team of "creatives" that Weiss encourages to come up with better ways each year of delighting visitors.

TULIP MANIA

Tulips at the tulip festival at Waterdrinker Family Farm. Credit: Morgan Campbell

People always ask about the flower’s history, so this year, all things Dutch, such as bicycles and windmill mock-ups, will be boosted by fact tidbits, or "edutainment" as McHeffey like to call it. The "Tulip Mania" exhibit, laid out in a silo and greenhouse, displays artistically painted facts on how traders, the rich, financiers and more went gaga over the tulip.

TRACTOR PEDAL CARS

Aaron Matzuy, front, his mother, Lucretia Matzuy, and brother, Angel,... — Aaron Matzuy, front, his mother, Lucretia Matzuy, and brother, Angel, all of Riverhead, race around the track on pedal-driven raceway cars. Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas

They look like tractors, but they’re really kid-sized bicycles. Both farm locations will have small circular tracks where pedalers can race. It’s all self-guided.

FARM ANIMALS

At the Manorville location, visitors can meet two baby goats. Credit: Paul Stowe / @freshlycaught

At the Manorville location, two goats born less than two months ago are hanging out with their moms. The boy goat, cream-colored Briar, loves to jump on his mom’s back and ride around. Sage, with brown, black and white hair, is the more adventurous of the two, always jumping off things and running around. But there are also pigs, alpacas, chickens and even a peacock to see.

LITTLE AMSTERDAM

In colors just as vibrant as tulips, a row of little houses have been set up for kids as a playground and photo backdrop. A planter of daffodils, also grown at Waterdrinker, sits in front of each greet house.

TOY TIME

Tired of tiptoeing among tulips? The farms’ second-best feature may be all the play opportunities. In the bull riding pen, kid-size toy bulls are for a little tame rocking. In the wooden playland, a train, pirate ship, monster truck and more let the little ones imagine all they can. A nine-hole mini golf course also invites the adults to play, while a jumbo jumping trampoline is big enough to fit a family.