Dixon organization comes up petunias

DIXON — It takes a lot of supporters for Dixon to uphold its reputation as “The Petunia Capital of Illinois” — and a lot of lampposts.

It’s a good thing Dixon has both.

With decades of history behind it and the Illinois General Assembly to support it, Dixon is proud of its reputation as “The Petunia Capital of Illinois,” a designation bestowed upon the city by state lawmakers in 1999. But it takes a lot of work to keep up appearances, a task that adds splashes of cascading color that overflow from flower baskets hanging from lampposts throughout a city that draws tourists from near and far to visit a president’s hometown, and locals by the thousands to celebrate the city’s annual Petunia Festival.

So where does all that flower power come from? It starts with a group that’s instrumental to the ornamentals with the trumpet-shaped flowers that toot Dixon’s horn: Dixon in Bloom.

Dixon in Bloom is a four-person committee that spearheads the petunia project. The current line-up consists of Robin Canode, Laurie McBride, Deb Nagy and Shirley Vivian, who also are members of the Dixon-based Rock River Garden Club and help the Dixon Chamber of Commerce and Main Street’s Beautify Dixon Committee, both of which organize other flower-filled beautification projects in the Petunia City.

Work starts on getting the 334 baskets of blooms ready for their debut after Memorial Day each year in April, at Nichols Greenhouse in Dixon, and doesn’t stop until October, when they’re taken down. With around 20 different petunias per basket, that’s around 7,000 in all, and that takes a lot of effort to keep them healthy during their roughly 6-months stay.

The petunia baskets have graced Galena, Hennepin and Peoria avenues, and River, First and Second streets in recent years, but there will be more around town this year — about 30 more than last year, with baskets coming to the Dement Town neighborhood, as well as the bike path along the former Illinois Central right-of-way over the historic arch bridges on the south side of town.

The Dixon in Bloom foursome is excited to see how people will react to a record number of petunia baskets this year — and based on prior positive feedback, the reaction should be a good one.

“We see on social media from families who don’t live here anymore but get so excited and say they’re so proud of their hometown and it looks so beautiful,” Nagy said. “We’ll have people literally stop us on the street and tell us that it looks amazing and phenomenal. The pride that other people in Dixon have in them is just overwhelming and really heartwarming for us. It makes all of the work so much easier.”

But it’s far from easy. The petunias have to be grown, transported, hung from lampposts and watered — and it takes a little green to make all that pink, too, about $25,000 a year, money that comes mostly from donations. Individuals, both locally and from out of town, kicked in 53% of last year’s bill, while The Rock River Garden Club donated 35%, with the remaining 12% coming from a combination of local government entities, local civic clubs and money from the annual Petunia Fest. Some donations have been made in memory of those who have enjoyed them, Nagy said.

When the committee formed in 2011, it began by hanging baskets along the Galena and Peoria Avenue bridges, and like a flower, the effort has just kept on growing.

“We’ve come a long way from 30 baskets on two bridges,” McBride said. “They’ve gotten so much fuller and prettier each year. Everyone takes pride in these petunias and they look pretty nice.”

Committee members and their volunteers get to be in the “delivery room” when the budding blossoms are born, watching their growth inside the greenhouse. It’s a treat seeing small green stems grow up into big bouquets of pink petals.

“It’s a magnificent feeling when you see all of them in the greenhouse, and to see them around town, it brings a lot of joy,” Vivian said. “It makes a lot of people happy. We couldn’t do this without all of the contributions that we get. We’re largely funded by individual donations, so a lot of people in Dixon and in the surrounding communities take pride in donating to the petunias and are happy to see them. They get really sad when they come down.”

Once the petunias are ready to take their place on the posts, maintenance workers from the City of Dixon pick up the baskets from the greenhouse, each weighing around 50 pounds, and hang them. They also water them on a regular basis, tooling around town on a UTV towing a trailer equipped with a tank and hose. The workers also take them down and haul them to Oakwood Cemetery, where the committee and volunteers dump the soil and petunias out of the baskets, which are saved for the following year, or replaced when necessary.

“We have people who ask why they have to come down so soon, because they’re so pretty,” Nagy said, but by fall, the Petunias are living on borrowed time. “It can freeze at any moment and the next day they’ll be bad. You don’t want them looking bad hanging for a couple of days before the City can get to them.”

Making Dixon bloom each year also takes a commitment from committee members, who are always on the lookout for ways to improve the quality of their petunias with advice from professional botanists and other green-thumbers on what kinds of petunias grow better with certain fertilizers, and the kinds of containers that will best suit them.

Once the baskets are hung, committee members keep an eye on them, watching out for signs of distress and pests, weeds, and anything else that will take the blooms off the petunia’s prettiness.

“The knowledge that we’ve gleaned from professionals about what fertilizer to use and how much to use impact how beautiful they are, and that makes it fun,” Nagy said. “The variety of petunias have changed over the years — and the fertilizer and the baskets — to get a little better each year, getting to the product that we have now.”

Dixon’s petunia history began in the early 1960s when Rock River Garden Club members planted petunias — about 4,000 the first year — on the verges between Galena Avenue and its sidewalks, following a combination of Dutch Elm disease and highway expansion that caused the removal of trees along the community’s major roadways. That effort lasted more than 40 years, but as time took its toll on the soil, helped by winter road salt and some homeowners losing interest, the flowers were losing a bit of their magic.

“Over the years they would just get sadder and sadder,” Nagy said. “Volunteers took care of every block, and some volunteers would do better than others, some homeowners took pride in theirs and some would get a little too close with the lawnmower. It became hit-or-miss, and with the soil, they kept getting scragglier.”

That’s where Dixon in Bloom began, with Canode, Vivian, Bill Ost, Jan Matha and Terry Nichols as its original members. Nagy and McBride joined later, after both had seen how the committee had reinvigorated Dixon’s petunia population once more.

After Ost made a visit to Red Wing, Minnesota, and saw how its downtown was decked out with flower baskets, he shared the idea with fellow committee members, who got hooked on the idea of hanging baskets of petunias.

Inspiration also came from arrangements in Dubuque and St. Charles, but Red Wing’s concept stood out.

“We made a trip up there and realized what an addition this would make to Dixon if we could replicate what they did in Red Wing,” Vivian said. “What I like is the beauty that it brings to Dixon. No matter what other towns I go to, our petunia baskets are fabulous. Even compared to some in Europe. I have my husband trained to look at other baskets, and he’s like, ‘Dixon’s are so much better.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah they are!’”

Just three years after the first baskets were hung, the number had nearly tripled, to 112, and they made their way downtown. By 2018, there were 256 baskets.

“It’s pretty unique,” McBride said. “Other towns that we’ve seen don’t have as good of luck, but this has taken a long time.”

The committee enjoys brightening people’s days by making Dixon more colorful every year.

“It’s really fun,” Nagy said. “Most of the work is volunteer work. It’s quite the operation and fun to be a part of. It’s work, but we all have a good time.”

Find Dixon in Bloom on Facebook to learn more about the organization’s activities. Donations can be made to P.O. Box 127, Dixon, IL 61021.