The Dyson family grows thousands of tulips at their Blueberry Hill U-Pick — and they’d like you to come pick some for yourself.
by Ayn-Monique Klahre | photography by Liz Condo

About 45 minutes from Raleigh, an old-school marquee beckons you  in with an arrow. The trip down a short gravel drive reveals a low-slung white farmhouse with a blue roof and rocking chairs on its ample front porch. Inside you’ll find classic country-store fare: homemade jam, baked goods and eastern NC vinegar-based BBQ sauce. 

But in March, this Sanford farm has a unique offering: more than an acre of pick-your-own tulips, waiting to be brought home as cut stems or with the bulbs still attached, ready to transplant into your own garden. The tulips are a relatively new but popular early-spring crop at Anthony and Janice Dyson’s family-run Blueberry Hill U-Pick, which — as the name suggests — got its start offering pick-your-own blueberries. 

Anthony grew up on a farm in eastern North Carolina, immersed in “blueberry country,” as he describes. A career in the construction-materials business moved him to Sanford decades ago, where he started to experiment with growing blueberries in his yard, like his father had before him. “It was a lot of trial and error, getting blueberries to grow here,” Anthony says. He and Janice enjoyed sharing their berries with friends and neighbors. 

After his retirement, Anthony and Janice moved to this farm on White Hill Road and started filling its 7 acres with blueberries to sell. Business was good, with the fruit stocked in local Harris Teeters and Lowes Foods grocery stores. 

The farm is a true family affair: in addition to Anthony and Janice, their two sons and their wives, as well as their two children, help out. “The grandchildren rule and reign,” laughs Anthony. “But it’s fun to have the whole family involved and working together, we enjoy it.” 

“We get along pretty good — I bring the knowledge and my dad brings the work ethic, so we get it done,” agrees his oldest son, David, a landscaper by trade who went to North Carolina State University to study horticulture and agriculture. 

David, who crushed his C5 vertebrae in a diving accident in 2017, uses an accessible ATV to do his work around the farm. “Where in the past I would have done the physical labor myself, I’ve had to get creative on how I teach what needs to be done,” he says. “I have to delegate.”

The farm had mainly been a wholesale operation until a few years ago, but soon they saw there was a market for pick-your-own blueberries. They added blackberries and grapes to their offerings and about three years ago started experimenting with flowers, planting tulips, ranunculus, zinnias and poppies. 

The pick-your-own tulips took off — they’re the only tulip farm within 60 miles — so they planted even more, investing in a bulb-planting machine from Holland last year to cut down on the labor. “There’s only two or three in the entire state,” says Anthony. “We used to do everything by hand, so it would take weeks to get everything into the ground. Now we can do it in two or three days.”

They plant the tulips in “the dead of winter,” David says, “the colder the soil, the better.” The exact arrival of the tulips is up to Mother Nature and where they’re planted. “If we have a warmer winter, they’ll come quicker, but if it’s chillier they’ll delay,” Anthony says. This year, they planted nearly 60,000 bulbs. “It sounds like a lot, but they’re planted pretty tight — the closer together and deeper they’re planted, the better they perform,” David says. They’ve learned that the taller tulips from Holland grow best. “We do a lot of Darwin hybrids, and I like to stick to the primary colors — they tend to be more vibrant and last longer,” says David.

Come March, the fields boast rows upon rows of the tall, cheerful blossoms, many with the classic goblet shapes, some boasting pointy or curly petals. David’s favorite tulips include the Wedding Dress (“it’s a true white”), Novi Sun (a bright yellow) and Red Impression. At the store, they also offer tulips in pots to bloom indoors (it’s tricky: they first have to be planted in the ground and then transplanted). Once the flowers bloom, there’s about a three-week period until “the show’s over,” says Anthony. “It’s a short window, but some people will come a couple times a week to pick flowers.”

In addition to the tulips, the farm has something blooming or fruiting about six months of the year, from the tulips’ debut through midsummer, when the blueberries ripen, until the grapes finish up in September. For the Dysons, it’s a way to meet neighbors and make new friends, from military families exploring out of Fayetteville to photographers bringing clients for engagement shots to Raleigh golfers who get lured in on their way to Southern Pines.

“We meet all kinds of people, it’s been a great way to connect with the community,” says David. Agrees Anthony: “We enjoy interacting with the public and working out in the dirt.”

This article originally appeared in the March 2025 issue of WALTER magazine.