In between these events was the birth of Azalea Park and our town’s introduction to sharing beauty and encouraging tourism. The park is 83 years old and was the brainchild of the Civic League, (forerunner of the Flowertown Garden Club) a group of ladies who began the project of a midtown park many years before the Depression. They raised money to buy 16 acres between Magnolia Street and Central Avenue and did it with ice cream suppers and cake sales. They deeded the property to the town.

Enter Mayor Grange S. Cuthbert, a flower lover who was born at Magnolia Plantation and a businessman who understood how plantation gardens brought in tourist dollars. To use a familiar thought: if he built it, they would come. They did.

He used a WPA grant to pay workers, including his own son, 10 cents an hour to turn the midtown property from “bramble into beauty.” The workers “pried gnarled trees from their earthy sockets, scooped out drainage ditches, laid out walkways and expelled troublesome vines.”

They next question was where the flowers would come from to plant that much land. The answer and the flowers, all 33,000 azaleas, came from George Segelken’s Summerville Floral Nursery. He was a pioneer in the propagation of azaleas and helped popularize them throughout this and other nearby states. Mr. Segelken planted many of the azaleas himself.

When the park was finished, tourists began to flock to Summerville, especially in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Sunday afternoons. They came because the azaleas were both beautiful and unique.

*There’s a memorial plaque to Mr. Segelken in the park in memory of the man “who donated plants, time and loving care to the creation of Azalea Park in 1935 and the park restoration in 1976.”

After her husband’s death, Mrs. Segelken asked that some of the salmon pink azaleas he had named “Pride of Summerville” be planted around the plaque.

It’s been suggested that people who enjoy the park – either driving past, by walking through, or at the upcoming Flowertown Festival – might think that is also a most appropriate name for Mr. Segelken.

How wonderful that a small, delicate looking but trumpet shaped blossom can both announce and continue to bolster the name and beauty of our own Flowertown in the Pines.

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So until tomorrow….I am now thinking that the old nursery’s  blue morning glories should be transplanted in the park and allowed to run up the trees and fill in the lowlands around the ponds and bridges…another floral memorial and legacy to the man who left such beauty behind. What a great gift to Summerville!!!

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Mollie did fantastic yesterday in the She Tris Sprint Triathlon – I’on Club!

Walsh said she placed 90 out of 300 participants…landing in the top third of the pack.  We are so proud!