A Community Project Waiting to Happen in Your Community
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Yellow is the color of remembrance. I didn’t know that, did you? Daffodils are hardy, robust, return year after year; it’s hard to keep them down, or annihilate them. They bloom in the spring, the season of hope. They are dug in in the fall, the season to remember 9-11, the day the hardy dug in.
Seventeen years ago, a garden club in New York inaugurated a project to plant daffodils in public places to honor the victims of 9-11. The project caught on, and each spring when communities are abloom, tourists and visitors are inspired to take the idea to their own towns. Millions of bulbs have been planted across the United States as a result of that project.
In the early years of the project, towns and cities, Parks and Recreation Departments, businesses, gave away the bulbs, encouraging participation. In New York City Burroughs, parks and community streets held clean up days to bring the community out together working to make their homes a better place, an act of rebirth in the revitalization of communities. And they planted daffodils in little remembrance gardens. In a way, it’s a reenactment of the aftermath of 9-11, isn’t it? Strangers in the neighborhood, coming together to work, and be united. Eventually, the goal was to plant one bulb for every NYC resident! In Cashiers, North Carolina, where I used to live, the Chamber of Commerce gave away bulbs. Soon the Crossroads and the Village Green were lined with daffodils. I hope, as the years come and go, that residents will remember why there are so many daffodils there.
Does your community participate in this project? If so, please tell us about it. I think it’s a lovely way to keep the remembrance for future generations. They didn’t live through it, but it’s terribly important that they know about it. It has definitely impacted their lives! And what community can’t use more yellow daffodils? It’s time to dig in!