In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Chair of New Yorkers for Parks Lynden Miller received a simple fax from a plant bulb wholesaler in the Netherlands named Hans van Waardenburg, expressing deep solidarity with the City of New York in its time of grief, and wondering if he could do anything to provide New Yorkers with some good cheer.
Seizing the opportunity, Miller wrote back to ask whether van Waardenburg had any excess daffodil bulbs that he could spare. Indeed, the idea of blanketing New York in bright yellow flowers (the colour of remembrance) received strong support from the New York Parks Commissioner at the time, and van Waardenburg swung into action. New York’s Daffodil Project was born.
The following autumn, ten thousand volunteer gardeners joined The Bulb Brigade, and got their hands dirty at planting sites across the city. Since then, millions of bright yellow daffodils have bloomed in the spring sunshine in New York’s planter boxes, gardens, nursing homes, and schools.
With every year that passes, the Daffodil Project just gets bigger. In 2007, Mayor Bloomberg declared the daffodil to be the official flower of New York City, and in 2012, New Yorkers for Parks distributed five million free daffodil bulbs to schools, parks and gardening groups, civic organisations and corporate volunteers to help brighten public spaces in all five boroughs.
Who could have imagined that such a simple fax, sent from so far away, could have spurred and sustained such community spirit in this concrete jungle?
