Cambridge is turning 50 and the city will be painting the town blue, yellow and white with floral displays in the downtown cores to set the mood for this upcoming spring.
City staff at the Riverside Park greenhouse have been working hard over the past few weeks to convert a part of their space to grow colour specific flowers that will represent the city's colourway.
"We are going to grow over 3,000 flowers to dress up the downtown cores to honour the city for its 50 anniversary," said Nathan Lantz, supervisor of horticulture operations.
The small greenhouse operation in Preston will grow nearly 50,000 individual flowers and other vegetation to plant in flower beds owned by the city. This year they have been tasked with creating beautiful spring floral displays that will help celebrate the anniversary.
In all three downtown cores starting in April, city workers will begin planting flowers to create a vibrant and colourful floral setting.
Lantz added there will be two separate waves of flowers going in. The first will see pansies going in to give that burst of colour to the city-scape, then tulips and other summer flowers will be brought in sometime in May.
The flowers they chose will be able to handle any kind of summer we get here in Cambridge; whether it is hot and dry or cooler and damp, the flowers should be able to hold their own.
"We also wanted to make sure that any flowers we were putting in are not invasive and are sticking with the pollinator theme that we have been promoting the last few years," said Lantz.
The horticulture team has been getting a lot of attention from the mayor and city council and they are hoping with the spotlight on them to provide a major part of the 50th anniversary theme around the city, they might be able to update their facility and bring it into the modern era.
"Our manager is from Hamilton and they have the Cadillac of greenhouses," Lantz said. "We would love to show people what we do here and how important this work is and then maybe we cant start to modernize some of our process."
The Riverside Park greenhouse was built in the 1980s and has stayed relatively the same ever since. Lantz has been working with the horticulture team in Cambridge for over 20 years and the process down to the space hasn't changed.
"At the highest we will have around 14 people working here, most of them seasonal students, but for the amount of flower beds we look after we are pretty much tapped out for space," he added.
Currently the pansies are starting to bloom and will be looking at hitting the streets by mid to late April after the chill of winter has gone.
