A National Capital Commission report recommends holding the popular Canadian Tulip Festival earlier, or even changing its name.

The annual festival takes place the first three weeks in May, but a report commissioned by the NCC says global warming could change that over the next few decades.

Tulip Festival
Tulip Festival

"They would have to consider: Do we move the tulip festival or do we introduce different flowers and call it the 'Spring Festival'? These are some of the adaptations they might have to consider," said Daniel Scott, the Canada Research Chair in Global Change and Tourism at the University of Waterloo, who helped prepare the report.

Renaming it the "Festival of Spring" and incorporating a wide variety of flowers are some of the more drastic recommendations. Other small-scale solutions include planting bulbs in shady areas and building snow fences around the flower beds to keep snow in and prevent bulbs from blooming too early.

Warmer weather is expected to cause the festival's one million tulips to bloom earlier every decade. By the 2020s, tulips may be blooming 10 to 24 days earlier, and by the 2050s, a full month earlier.

Recommendations for the Tulip Festival:
  • Plant bulbs in shady locations
  • Heavily mulch flower beds
  • Erect snow fences to increase snow cover on flower beds to delay bulb maturation
  • Plant bulbs with different rates of maturation

The NCC report outlines strategies for adapting to the effects of climate change on some of the region's most popular events, including Winterlude, Canada Day and the Canadian Tulip Festival.

The NCC's former chief horticulturalist, Ed Lawrence, says while he wouldn't want to see the end of the festival, he thinks adding other flowers into the mix is a good idea.

"The fact is the celebration is one of spring, not just the emergence of tulips, and why don't we do something about the lilacs, and the spirea and the forsythia. Should I go on? I mean it's endless," said Lawrence.

But the festival organizer, Doug Little, says there are no plans to change the event's name.

"There certainly isn't a lot of appetite for that at the Canadian Tulip Festival. We're a tulip festival. We're a celebration of the tulip, as a symbol of peace and friendship and all of the things the gift of tulips represents."