The Anza-Borrego Desert isn’t the only local flower-growing area expecting a super bloom this spring.
The longtime manager of the Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch said the gentle and steady rains, mixed with intermittent periods of sunshine, over the past five months have produced a nearly perfect germination of the ranch’s famed ranunculus flowering plants.
“Every inch of arable land should have plants on it. This has been one of our best years ever,” said Fred Clarke, who has managed the Flower Fields since 2006. “Visitors will see more flowering plants per acre and a lot more color in the fields.”
On March 1, the Flower Fields ranch will open for its annual 10-week tourist season, which Clarke said could draw as many as 290,000 visitors this year. The best time to visit is in mid-April, when much of the hillside will be in bloom, but Clarke said the robust rainfall has brought out a lot of early blooms already.
Ester Morales, foreground, cuts ranunculus blooms that will be shipped to florists as growers begin their blooming season last week at the Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch.
Ester Morales, foreground, cuts ranunculus blooms that will be shipped to florists as growers begin their blooming season last week at the Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch. (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune)
Over the past quarter-century, the Flower Fields have become one of the region’s most-photographed tourist attractions. Clarke said in the early years he was thrilled to welcome 75,000 visitors each spring. But with the advent of Instagram and other social media platforms, business has exploded. About 35 to 40 weddings take place in the fields each spring and fashion designers and photographers with millions of social media followers are now regularly using the property for fashion shoots.
“They do all of the marketing for us,” said Clarke, a Vista resident.
While the ranch property has tractor rides, a children’s playground, a sweet pea maze, botanical garden, a nursery and dozens of special events, the true star of the 55-acre property is the flowers themselves. The Giant Tecolote Ranunculus, a locally bred strain of an unscented Asian-born flora related to the buttercup.
The long sloping hillside, which stretches from Cannon Road south to Palomar Airport Road, has been home to flowering plants since 1923, when the Paul Ecke family moved their poinsettia-growing operation south from Los Angeles.
When the Eckes transitioned from cut poinsettia flowers to potted poinsettia plants and moved their growing operations inside greenhouses, the fields were leased in 1965 to another local grower, Edwin Frazee.
His father, Frank, had begun growing ranunculus flowers in the 1930s after learning about them from his neighbor, Luther Gage. Riverside-raised Gage moved to Carlsbad in the early 1920s to grow flowers for the L.A. market. Among the first seeds he planted at his small Oceanside farm were ranunculus, which he’d ordered from a seed vendor in Europe.
Back in those days, ranunculus flowers had just a few petals, but over the years, Gage, and later, the Frazees developed a plant with stronger stems and bigger flowers with more petals. When Edwin Frazee retired in 1993, the Eckes brought in a new grower, Mellano & Co., which has farmed the property ever since.
Up until about 20 years ago, the ranunculus were grown as a bulb crop, with the bulbs shipped to California nurseries and home gardeners for home planting. But as home growers increasingly opted for the instant gratification of buying flowering plants at stores like Home Depot, the ranch transitioned into a cut flower operation. Cut ranunculus ship well and can last up to two weeks in a vase with little petal decay.
During the spring blooming season, a crew of 40 field workers move through the fields to harvest the most pristine 1 percent of flowers with the strongest stems and tightest and biggest unopened buds. They’re packed and shipped by air, mostly to the East Coast.
The other 99 percent — about 700 million blooms each year — are left in the fields for tourists to enjoy. At the end of the blooming season, the bulbs are dug up and replanted on a 40-acre patch nearby to produce seeds for future crops.
The fields are divided into seven-acre blocks that are planted sequentially three weeks apart, north to south, so that there are always a few sections in various stages of bloom at the same time. Each plant produces 12 to 15 stems of flowers during its month-long blooming cycle.
There are 14 colors of ranunculus along with a couple variegated and seasonal varieties. Over the years, Clarke said the field planting designs have varied from color blocks to a patchwork quilt. Four years ago, it took on a rainbow pattern, which has been especially popular with visitors.
After the terrorists attacks on 9/11, the ranch added another planted floral display, a large American flag on a south-facing hillside along Palomar Airport Road. Originally, it was created with both ranunculus and blue anemone plants, since ranunculus doesn’t come in blue. Five years ago, the flag was replanted with only petunias, since their long blooming cycle can last all the way to the Fourth of July, Clarke said.
Over the decades, the property around the flower fields has been developed with Legoland theme park, hotels, shopping centers, car dealerships and restaurants. But, thanks to a deal the Eckes worked out with the city of Carlsbad in the 1990s, the 55-acre Flower Fields have been set aside in perpetuity for flower-growing.
Clarke, who has worked on and off for the Ecke family for more than 30 years, said he admires their decision to preserve one of the last bastions of an area that was once known as the flower capital of the U.S.
“I think that says a lot about the Ecke family,” Clarke said. “They ensured that future generations will be able to come enjoy the beauty of these flowers.”
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