SCRANTON, LACKAWANNA CO. (WOLF) — Jazz filled the air as flower fanatics filled the Everhart Museum grounds for the fifth annual Electric City Flower Show.
“I think the flower show is wonderful for Scranton,” said Maureen Fitzsimmons, who entered 4 flowers into the flower show. “And I think it’s just a gorgeous event to have and it’s a gorgeous day today.”
Featuring food trucks, live music, and over 70 vendors ranging in all things horticulture, hundreds came out throughout the day to look at art, browse outdoor decorations, and of course, marvel at flowers.
“Everybody has put a lot of love into growing that flower, and now they’re here to display it,” said Amy DeReamer, a volunteer and chair of the flower competition.
The main event: the flower show, where 125 entries were submitted for a range of different categories. From 10a.m. to 12p.m., master gardeners judged the flowers on a range of criteria – awarding first places no matter the age – as shown through one first place winner, 3-year-old Jackson Hnat.
But the big prize, best in show, went to Maureen Fitzsimmons’ water lily.
“It grew in my pond,” explained Fitzsimmons with a smile on her face. “It literally opened yesterday. I was waiting and waiting all week for it to open, and it just opened. It stays open all day, closes at night, and it’s just a really pretty flower.”
But to the volunteers who run the show, everyone, regardless of if you grew a flower from a seed or just came to see some beautiful blossoms, was a winner.
And it was the volunteers that made the show possible in the first place.
“The show was going to go away because the woman who started this has moved away,” explained DeReamer. “Volunteers came together and I didn’t want the flower piece to go away. I just love flowers and grow them at home, I have a lot of deer that eat them too, so I put this on for the community and I hope it continues I didn’t do it alone; it is a team of volunteers that come together and I’m just so happy for this turnout. Happy that everybody’s having a great day.”
It’s a yearlong process that takes time, effort, and the help of many volunteers and they hope they can get even more next year but because of their hard work this year, the electric city flower show showed Scranton at full bloom.