Floral funding

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If you’re among the 1.6 million tourists stepping off a cruise ship in the port of Juneau, Alaska, each summer, it quickly becomes clear that Juneauites love flowers and take pride in showing off their city.

Each week during cruise season from April to October, the cruise ship docks are packed with thousands of tourists who stroll by planters filled with vibrant annual blooms and foliage like cosmos, geraniums, pansies and kale. In the bustling downtown area, cedar baskets dripping with nasturtiums and calibrachoas decorate the streetlights.

Local businesses and individuals fund these beautiful blooms through a program called Adopt-A-Flower. A local garden club started the program 40 years ago, and it’s grown along with the city. In 2024, crews grew and planted nearly 16,000 plants in the city of Juneau.

Juneau is a state capital that cannot be reached by outside roads. Streets throughout town are modern and easy to navigate, but there’s no access over the surrounding mountains.

Because all people and products, including plant supplies, come into Juneau via air or water, Juneau city employees grow all the plants in a city-owned 1,800-square-foot oil-heated greenhouse. Last year, the crew grew enough plants for 200 hanging baskets, 60 flower barrels and 50 flower beds and planters.

Adopt-A-Flower history

Adopt-A-Flower began in 1984, according to Carol Ackerson, the “flower queen” for the City and Borough of Juneau. (Her title is a direct quote from the deputy director of Juneau’s Parks & Recreation Department.) Back then, Juneau had a basic landscape aesthetic, Ackerson said, and the local garden club devised a beautification program to involve the community.

The resulting program, Adopt-A-Flower, has a two-fold purpose. The first is to beautify downtown Juneau for the tourist season. The second is to encourage local residents to start gardening in their own yards.

A summertime tour of Juneau’s neighborhoods proves that out. Local green thumbs abound, and yards are filled with flowering shrubs like rhododendron, spiraea and flame azalea, as well as perennials like primroses, Himalayan blue poppies and Shasta daisies. (Juneau’s cool, rainy climate is ideal for primulas, and the local Jensen-Olson Arboretum features a world-class collection.) Many homes feature window boxes and mixed containers with calibrachoas, begonias and angelonia.

Adopt-A-Flower began as a small volunteer effort and is now a treasured hallmark of civic pride. “Once the city started, they wanted the color pop every year,” and they kept the program going, Ackerson says.

In the greenhouse

Adopt-A-Flower opens each spring, and the first five contributors at the $500-plus level receive a flower-filled 20-inch wire hanging basket that they can take home or display at their businesses. Competition is fierce for the coveted designs, with businesses pre-ordering to be among the hanging basket recipients.

Adopt-A-Flower raised $7,500 in 2024, and all proceeds will go toward buying seeds, plugs and supplies. The city recognizes donors on its website and its sign in downtown Juneau.

Each fall, Ackerson selects seeds and plugs for next year’s program. She picks tried-and-true favorites like Argyranthemum (Marguerite daisy) and is always on the lookout for new varieties. For plants to make her list, they need to tolerate a cold start, a lot of rain and summertime high temperatures in the 60s.

Dianthus is “bomb-proof,” she says, because it tolerates both dry and wet conditions. Spillers, the trailing elements from her signature hanging baskets and window boxes, can be a pain point. Creeping Jenny no longer makes the cut. She has high hopes for Emerald Green dichondra as a spiller for her containers. More go-to picks include cosmos, calendula, pansies, salvia and snapdragons.

Ackerson is a floral artist and packs her designs with color and texture. A favorite window box arrangement features purple pansies, white anemones, pink dianthus, yellow tuberous begonias, yellow and orange bidens and amethyst shaded verbena. The inspiration for her exuberant combinations comes from her collection of colorful patterned scarves. “I look at my scarves and figure out how to create a pattern with plants,” she explains.

The team orders plugs from DGI Propagators in Hudsonville, Michigan, and they are shipped via FedEx. Seed sources include Germania, Burpee, Outside Pride and Territorial Seed. Inputs like soil and fertilizer arrive on weekly barges that bring supplies into the town.

Installation and maintenance

Crews sow seeds and plugs in February, and by mid-May, finished plants are ready for planting around town. Landscape Maintenance Supervisor Ben Patterson’s 13-member crew takes a couple weeks to install the plants around the city. All plants are in place by June 7.

Once the plants are installed, Patterson’s team waters, deadheads, prunes and, occasionally, replaces plants. Abundant rain in southeast Alaska isn’t always a given. Summer 2023 was warm and dry, and the plants needed more frequent watering. Patterson says that the goal is for the plantings to go no more than two days without water.

Keeping flowers looking their best for tourists is a challenge. Pest pressure takes on a fresh layer of meaning in wild Alaska. In addition to managing water and fertilizer needs, local wildlife like ravens forage in the garden beds. “They’ll grab the plants and flip them out of the barrels,” Patterson says.

Juneau is blessed with a summer season perfect for enjoying annuals, but it slows down with the first frost in mid-September. At the conclusion of the season, Patterson’s crew composts all the annuals and spreads the organic matter on the perennial beds to protect the plants throughout the long Alaskan winter. Then, the team reflects on their favorite and most successful flowers and plans for the next season.

Lucy Mercer is a Georgia-based garden writer and content creator.