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Susan Ransom's Mayor's Daughters Garden

Portland, Maine

I live in a small Deering Center neighborhood with three parallel streets, just two blocks long, named for sisters Madeline, Mabel, and Alba Baxter, daughters of Portland Mayor James Phinney Baxter. Houses and lots are fairly small, and the neighborhood is bounded by Evergreen Cemetery and Baxter Pines, so it is an unusually quiet neighborhood where people talk to each other in the street and get together to socialize. The women's group on our street includes a lot of gardeners and several cancer survivors.

Shortly after Robin Whitten introduced the Pink Tulip Project at a Cure Breast Cancer for ME event a few years ago, I was raking leaves in front of my house and imagined pink tulips planted in the verges from one end of Alba Street to the other. It was Robin's concept of the hope that is represented in every bulb planting that moved me. Every gardener understands Robin's concept of bulbs as symbols of transformation. From the oniony lumps we put under the soil, we receive astonishing beauty six months later.

In 2009, about twenty neighborhood women and I split 500 bulbs among us. Our blooming designs were all unique and planted on four different streets, so the effect was far reaching. In 2010 we're doubling the order and recruiting more neighbors to spread the joy.