EDMONDS — The unofficial motto of this city could be “the flower city.” Flower baskets have decorated the city’s streets for decades.
The baskets throughout the downtown area are the result of collaboration between the city and the Edmonds Floretum Garden Club.
The partnership dates back to 1922, when one of the club’s first programs was planting trees on Main Street, said Barbara Chase, the garden club’s historian. “It’s changed over the years,” she said. “We’ve gotten into native plants.”
This year, 148 flowering baskets will be displayed in the city after a volunteer project that has become an annual rite of spring. Garden club members take plants from the city’s greenhouses in City Park and transfer them into hanging baskets, which will be displayed on decorative posts.
Last week, garden club members filled each basket with red and yellow petunias, persian ivy, verbena, bidens and begonia, working through an unusually chilly spring morning to complete their work.
“I’m freezing,” Barbara Vadset said, smiling as she explained she had recently returned from Arizona. This was the fourth year Vadset turned out for the event.
“This is my favorite thing to do with the garden club,” she said. “I’ve admired the baskets for many years. I said, ‘I want to do that.’ ”
Cynda Norman said she moved to the area in October from Iowa, where she had a large garden. She said she now lives in a condo where there’s no garden space available. The project helps satisfy her need “to get my hands in the dirt,” she said.
April Richardson said the city’s flower baskets made an impression on her before she moved to Edmonds last summer, thinking, “I’m sure people here have figured out a nice way to live.”
Richardson said at first she wasn’t quite sure what was involved in the garden club volunteer project called “planting baskets” but decided to sign up to find out. “I thought ‘Oh, that sounds fun,’ ” Richardson said. “I’m a fun-seeker.”
Janice Noe retired from the city’s parks department in 2007. In that role, she had gotten to know garden club members, working with them on projects beginning in 1985. After retiring, she sometimes volunteers with the club.
“This is something that’s valued here,” she said of having the flowering plants and greenery deployed around the city. “It’s really special. It makes you smile when you see them.”
The 23 garden club volunteers made quick work of the project. They completed transplanting the flowers and ivy for 148 decorative baskets in 90 minutes. “That’s a record,” city arborist Debra Dill said.
The baskets will be kept at the city’s greenhouse and put on display in the downtown area the first week in June.
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486; salyer@heraldnet.com.
Plant sale
The Edmonds Floretum Garden Club has scheduled its annual plant sale from 9 a.m. to noon on May 2 in the parking lot of the PCC Natural Market in Edmonds, 9803 Edmonds Way. The event helps fund the organization’s annual $1,500 scholarship to a student who plans a career in horticulture.
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