Kennett Blooms will celebrate the spring and summer seasons in Kennett Square with beautiful plantings and placemaking activities.
We’re expanding the popular and well-received Kennett Blooms program with new ideas to bring joy and beauty to all who live, visit, and work here. We’re planning plantings, parklets, and a profusion of flowers, including the brand-new Kennett Blooms: Floral Flash event.
In addition to professionally designed planters and gardenscapes, Kennett Collaborative is seeking Borough Council approval for projects including weekly street closures for outdoor dining on State Street, parklets, and the Kennett Blooms: Floral Flash, which will feature temporary floral installations in public places throughout town the weekend of June 10th through 12th.
Floral Flash will showcase the creativity of some of our talented local floral designers, celebrate the multi-sensory beauty, colors, textures, and fragrances of flowers, and provide everyone in our community with an opportunity to experience this beauty. Because Floral Flash is planned for the graduation weekend for both Kennett and Unionville high schools, it will also offer graduates and their families beautiful backdrops for photos of their special occasion. Kennett Collaborative is planning its inaugural Summerfest wine-tasting event in the uptown area for the same weekend, on Sunday, June 12th.
Kennett Blooms: Floral Flash takes inspiration from New York florist Lewis Miller’s Flower Flash pop-up installations.
Plans are also in the works for parklets in new locations. We’re very excited about a ‘nomadic parklet,’ which will appear in different spots around town over the summer months and provide an attractive outdoor spot for coffee and conversation.
Kennett Blooms will add planters and plantings near the pedestrian entrance to the parking garage this year to create a beautiful and welcoming entry to State Street. We’re also excited to see how last year’s projects, like the plantings in the Genesis Walkway, mature and bring even more beauty this season. Another project that falls under the Kennett Blooms umbrella is Laura Florence’s “Meadowitos” project, winner of Kennett Collaborative’s inaugural placemaking competition, which will create little meadows of native pollinator plants in forgotten, blighted patches of ground throughout the Borough.
The Kennett Blooms parklet on South Broad Street last year was enjoyed by young and old alike.
But Kennett Blooms is about more than plantings, parklets, and outdoor dining—It’s also about reimagining our community—seeing the familiar as if for the first time, and expanding our collective vision and conversations about beauty and public space.”
Kennett Square is very photogenic. Pictures of its historic, human-scale buildings and beautifully maintained storefronts along tree-lined streets make people want to step into this place. The purpose of placemaking programs like Light Up the Square and Kennett Blooms is to enhance people’s experience of the town. It can be a difficult concept to define, like beauty itself, but details like lights, beautiful plantings, fun and creative installations like parklets, and opportunities to dine with friends and family al fresco on a street closed to traffic are all integral parts of what people love about visiting and being part of the community of Kennett Square.
Collaborators Make Kennett Bloom
As a 501c3 nonprofit, Kennett Collaborative depends on community support to make all of its programming possible. One longtime supporter explains why she gives a substantial annual gift to Kennett Collaborative: “Christmas in downtown Kennett has always been special to me, starting from the first tree lighting I took my son to in the 1980s. I’ve always loved driving down State Street to see the decorated stores, so Light Up the Square to me makes it even more magical. Kennett Blooms makes our town more beautiful to residents and visitors alike. While traveling in Europe I always loved the profusion of flowers in villages and parts of cities. My gift to Kennett Collaborative is to help sustain the organization that makes all of that possible and does so much more to keep our incredible community vibrant and welcoming for residents, visitors, and business interests.”
The sustaining and ongoing support of our supporters—our Collaborators—enables Kennett Collaborative to create beloved community programs and events like Kennett Blooms and Light Up the Square as well as the KSQ Farmers Market, the KSQ Speaker Series: How We Build Matters, Kennett Brewfest and Winterfest, and the Kennett Square Holiday Village Market as well as our weekly Around the Square newsletter, and more.
Weekly street closures to allow for outdoor dining on State Street will be part of Kennett Blooms this year.
“We’re very grateful that Longwood Gardens is, once again, sponsoring Kennett Blooms,” he says. “Kennett Collaborative and Longwood share a common vision for Kennett Square to become the most beautiful town in America, and our hope is that local businesses and professionals will follow the lead of Longwood Gardens by investing in Kennett Blooms.”
“Bringing beauty into our community is essential not only to the vitality of the community, but to the well-being of all who live, work, and play in it,” says Longwood Gardens President and CEO Paul B. Redman. “That is why Longwood Gardens is proud to support Kennett Collaborative’s Kennett Blooms program. It’s programs like this that help give Kennett its unique spirit and make it the welcoming destination it is.”
Those who would like to support Kennett Blooms can find more information here.
