You Can Pick Your Own Tulips On Park Avenue This Week

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A time-honored spring tradition on the Upper East Side is set to return this weekend: the Park Avenue Tulip Dig, in which residents are invited to dig up the flowers that beautify the thoroughfare in hopes of replanting them at home.

This year's dig will run from Saturday, May 15 through May 22, allowing people to dig up any tulip bulbs they find on Park Avenue's mid-mall planters between the north side of 54th Street and the south side of 86th Street.

The dig happens each year after petals begin to fall from the roughly 60,000 tulips that are planted along the avenue each spring. The nonprofit Fund for Park Avenue, which has cared for the boulevard's gardens since 1980, plants a new color of flowers every year.

This year's bright yellow tulips are "Novi Sun," a variety of Darwin hybrids, which are considered the most weather-resistant of all garden tulips. If their leaves are not cut, they can come back "year after year," according to the Fund.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Fund For Park Avenue (@fundforparkavenue)

"With proper care, Park Avenue tulips have been replanted and continue to bloom in personal and community gardens in and around New York City and beyond," the Fund said in a flier for this year's dig.

Prospective diggers are invited to bring their own trowels and asked to avoid taking any soil or cutting off leaves. The tulip bulbs can be stored in a dry place until their leaves turn brittle, then replanted in October or November in a spot that gets full sunlight.