No Tulip Festival for Rotorua this year

The Rotorua Tulip Festival, New Zealand's largest tulip festival, will not be happening this year. Photo / File

The Rotorua Tulip Festival, New Zealand's largest tulip festival, will not be happening this year.

A post on the Tulip Fest Rotorua Facebook page today said the Rotorua Tulip Fest would not be running in 2018, however, the tulips would still be blooming throughout the city from early to mid-October.

Rotorua Museum will be running free daily tours including information about the tulip planting during this time and, depending on availability, blooming tulips may be sold at the Farmers Market.

Last year's festival included 12 family events for a small cost or free and more than 100,000 brightly coloured tulips were planted around the city.

Pauline Evans, who helped organise the festival in 2016, said the festival was a lot of fun and brought a lot of different people together.

"We loved being part of it and it's sad to see it's not going forward, but it is a huge process to bring the festival together."

Evans said for all the effort involved in organising the festival it would be a sensible decision to focus on the tulip planting.

"We think the tulips look lovely when they're all out in bloom."

Tulips have quite a storied history. In The Netherlands, there was such demand for the flowers in the 17th century, the resulting frenzy caused a major economic crash in 1637.

"Tulip" comes from the Turkish word tulbent, which was from the Persian dullband, meaning turban, from its resemblance to the headwear.

Tulip Fest Rotorua was the brainchild of the Inner City Focus Group when it started in 2014.

The Rotorua Lakes Council was unable to meet a request for comment by deadline.