Seasonal Spectacle in Full Bloom

On the drive from Orange County, Diane Aronow was the quiet one.

Then she bolted from a car and stood in wonderment at the floral carpets of reds, whites and yellows that greeted her at the Flower Fields of Carlsbad Ranch.

“It’s absolutely splendid,” said Aronow of Rancho Santa Margarita, a member of the Saddleback Newcomers Club, which had organized the day trip to the fields just east of Interstate 5 at Palomar Airport Road.

An estimated 200,000 visitors from throughout Southern California will see the colorful fields in this San Diego County city during their six- to eight-week blooming season. The blooms last until May.

Aronow recently moved to the new foothill community at the base of the Saddleback Mountains from Scottsdale, Ariz., where such colorful flowers as buttercups, blooming shamrocks and starflowers simply would not survive.

But on this 50-acre hillside kissed by gentle coastal breezes, growers raise more than 200,000 plants per acre, a spectacular sight that easily catches the eye of thousands of motorists whizzing by on the nearby interstate.

Bulbs from the colorful plants are harvested by machine after the blooms die and are sold throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.

Between now and May, the fields burst with millions of blossoms that transform this once dusty farm into wide swaths of color suitable for any artist.

“It doesn’t make us rich,” said Phyllis Humphrey of Oceanside, who hawked her husband’s oil paintings from a nearby booth. “But it’s wonderful to get paid to sit here all day to look at gorgeous flowers.”

The retired couple moved to Southern California from San Francisco six years ago. When the ranch first allowed artists to sell on its property three years ago, the Humphreys took the chance.

Once just a dusty field where Encinitas poinsettia king Paul Ecke Sr. and Oceanside ranunculus grower Edwin Frazee farmed, the fields today sport a gift shop, mining exhibition and arts and crafts booths. A $2 entry fee is charged.

When Frazee retired in 1993, the ranch was in jeopardy of being sold for development by its owners. But it was saved by Ecke’s son, Frazee, local grower Mike Mellano, the Carlsbad Agricultural Improvement Fund and the California Coastal Conservancy.

“Now we even have entertainment such as musical groups playing on the weekends for special occasions,” said Joni Miringoff, marketing director at the ranch, which is planning Oceanside Day festivities, including a U.S. Marine Corps Band, on Friday.

Pat Grove, a New Yorker now living in San Juan Capistrano, said she felt rejuvenated as she slowly walked along the ranch’s dirt paths that reminded her of a tulip garden in urban New York. “But here, everything is so open. It’s big. It’s really breathtaking,” Grove said.

Large groups are often accompanied with volunteer guides such as Don Miller, a master gardener with UC San Diego’s Cooperative Extension. It gave horticultural enthusiasts such as Ferol Wenzel of Foothill Ranch an opportunity to pepper Miller with questions about raising plants.

“You don’t see flowers like these in Wisconsin,” said Wenzel, who used to live in that state. “It’s cold there and you need a warm climate for these flowers to survive.”

Even Miller, who also is curator of native plants at the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas, said he enjoys the ranch’s beauty.

“These carpets of flowers,” Miller said, “they’re so pretty, I just can’t stay away.”