The Marquette Beautification and Restoration Committee has done it again — brighten up the southern gateway to the city of Marquette with thousands of flowers.
Petunia Pandemonium is the annual event that gets the plants in the ground, and last Saturday marked the 20th anniversary of the effort.
While the flower project was created by the city’s beautification group, and continues to be coordinated by it, much of the credit goes to the roughly 500 volunteers who plant the flowers along South Front Street.
The effort got its start back in 1988, when about 40 volunteers worked through a thunderstorm to plant the first flowers — which were all petunias, thus leading to the event’s name.
From its humble beginnings, Petunia Pandemonium grew to the large planting festival it is today, which includes about 23,000 flowers of varying types being planted.
School children are a major volunteer group that actually kicks off the planting the Friday before the main event. And come Saturday morning, there is a cross-section of citizens, including Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, sports teams, service clubs, families and individuals pitching in to spruce up the drive into the city from the south.
In addition to the hundreds of volunteers, several area businesses lend support to help make the effort a success.
Beautification committee member Barb Kelly came up with the idea after learning about a similar project in downstate Charlevoix.
She has remained steadfast in support of the project ever since, and she and her husband Pete can be found almost daily tending the flowers — along with several other volunteers — throughout the summer.
The committee, volunteers and businesses involved in Petunia Pandemonium deserve a big thank you from the community for making the summer a little brighter in Marquette.
