Hope is growing with yellow flowers

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In the coming weeks the colour yellow will be prominently on display in Tillsonburg.

“Communities in Bloom put a call out to garden clubs, horticultural societies, and landscapers to focus on the colour yellow because yellow is the international colour of hope,” said Christine Nagy, president of the Tillsonburg Horticultural Society.

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“So if we plant yellow flowers in this time of the pandemic, it would cheer people up and give people hope for the future.”

That means gardens planted by the horticultural society will have more yellow flowers than any other colour. They include Bert Newman Park, Annandale National Historic Site, Tillsonburg Senior Centre, Tillsonburg Legion and Station Arts Centre.

“The planters downtown with the BIA will also feature more yellow,” said Nagy, noting it’s the fifth year for the large and popular planters from Tillsonburg Garden Gate set up at downtown Broadway intersections (and this year some side streets).

“Those will be put on Broadway the Tuesday following the long weekend in May,” said Mark Renaud, executive director, Tillsonburg BIA.

They won’t be exclusively yellow, Nagy stressed, but predominantly yellow.

“Also some hot, happy, vibrant colours like peach and orange and apricot, those sort of colours.”

The horticultural society is also putting the call out to Tillsonburg and area residents to join planting yellow.

“Even though it’s not everybody’s favourite colour, necessarily, but just for this one year to come together like that,” she said.

“The feedback that I’m hearing is that there have been people coming into town that said they can’t get over how pretty Tillsonburg is with all the planters and everything. So they are noticing it.”

All of the partners involved with the beautification of downtown Tillsonburg had a meeting in March, said Renaud,.

“We had a meeting about a meeting about a month ago with the BIA, the Horticultural Society and the Town to talk about flowers in the downtown area and parks in some of flower beds,” noted Chris Baird, Tillsonburg’s director of Recreation, Culture and Parks.

“The colour yellow is the one that’s being promoted, definitely in Ontario if not Canada,” said Baird. “Yellow is the colour of hope, and after COVID and everything we’ve been through over the last year, and the fact we’ve got vaccines coming, it’s just a theme that builds a bit of interest and encouragement.”

“Because of the stresses of Covid, we all agreed that we would use yellow flowers for 2021 because yellow signifies hope,” said Renaud. “The Town, the BIA, the horticultural society and others are strongly encouraging everybody to use yellow as a predominant colour in all of the plantings to give people hope. We’re trying to give people a positive motivation that we will get through COVID, we will see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

The yellow flowers will also be used at different building sites, and at some of the parkettes managed by the Town on Broadway and Oxford Street, some of the main gateways, said Baird.

“We totally agreed with that, so our parks staff… we’re going to incorporate yellow as well, so there’s a bit of a theme through town,” said Baird. “The Town is certainly encouraged to work with them.”

cabbott@postmedia.com