Floral Park volunteers keep village blooming one flower at a time
Volunteers are planting thousands of flowers in Floral Park to help the village live up to its name!
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In a village named Floral Park, flowers are more than just decoration, they are part of the community’s identity.
“Everyone is patriotic and passionate about the town," says Donna DiStefano, chairperson of the Floral Park Village Beautification Committee. Each spring, Donna leads dozens of volunteers who spend hours planting flowers throughout the village, from the Veterans Memorial to the Floral Park welcome circle and along Floral Park Way.
The volunteers include all ages and skill levels. What they have in common is a love for spreading beauty. Distefano works closely with Loreto Decaintis, Floral Park Village Supervisor. He plants thousands of plants & lays hanging baskets on the street in addition to making sure the villages many outdoor activities and events go flawlessly. “Every year there’s extra people, a lot more people helping to beautificate,” Decaintis explains.
Among those volunteers is longtime resident Bill Lane, who helps place flower boxes beneath no parking signs throughout the village. Lane and his wife are already well known around town for their Easter egg tree, decorated with nearly 900 eggs every spring, a project that takes about eight hours to complete.
The couple has lived in Floral Park for 35 years. “We’re newbies,” Lane joked. When I asked how long some of his neighbors have lived in the village, he laughed: “Fifty plus.”
Floral Park’s connection to flowers dates back to the late 1800s, when the area became home to one of the nation’s first major mail-order seed and bulb businesses. Developer and horticulturist John Lewis Childs transformed the community into a center for flower cultivation and distribution, attracting visitors and residents with colorful gardens and greenhouses. Childs helped rename the area Floral Park because of its thriving floral industry, and the village quickly became known for its beautiful blooms and horticultural roots.
More than a century later, today's volunteer planting efforts continue that tradition and help preserve the identity that gave Floral Park its name.
