After a two-year hiatus, an estimated 30 Edmonds Floretum Garden Club members and volunteers were back at it with a vengeance on Tuesday morning, filling the 100 hanging flower baskets that will grace our downtown streets this summer. Organized in 1922, this year the Edmonds Floretum Garden Club celebrates 100 years of bringing floral beauty to Edmonds.
An annual tradition for Floretum, the flower basket planting had to be cancelled for the past two year due to the pandemic But it was clear from the smiles and enthusiasm that the volunteers relished getting their collective hands back into the soil to set the stage for a burst of summer floral beauty on our downtown streets.
And who knew – turns out Mayor Mike Nelson is quite skillful with a trowel, as he got his hands in the dirt alongside club members to help move the effort along.
“So happy to have a beautiful day for this event,” Nelson said. “I love the enthusiasm today! And these baskets will help make it a beautiful summer downtown.”
According to Edmonds Parks Department Horticulturalist Eric Bird, the city provided more than 900 individual plant starts for club members to assemble in the large plastic liners that fill the downtown hanging baskets. And talk about energy — it took Floretum members only about an hour to get everything planted.
“We’ll leave the planted basket liners in the greenhouse so they can grow and get established,” Bird explained. “We’ll begin putting them out on the streets as of June 1.”
And there is still time to adopt a flower basket (or a corner park), and help support the city’s flower program. Details are available here.
— Story and photos by Larry Vogel
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