Tulips on Troost needs … tulips
Durwin Rice, the founder of the Tulips on Troost project, has more than 200 volunteers ready to plant tulip bulbs on a long stretch of Troost Avenue on October 15. This midtown beautification project, which began six years ago, traditionally plants between 25,000 and 75,000 tulip bulbs each autumn, up and down one of Kansas City’s most historic streets. This year, however, the project planners discovered that they have more volunteers than tulip bulbs.
“Actually, we never have enough bulbs to do all the plantings we want,” says Rice, noting that the beautification area has expanded well beyond its original Troost borders — between Beacon Hill on the north and 83rd Street on the south — to include the old Marlborough neighborhood on the southeast side. “Generally people make donations to the Tulips on Troost fund through the Southtown Foundation. But this year, we didn’t have as many fundraisers, so we came up a little short.”
But fans of the project have been coming through, Rice says, donating money and literally picking up bags of tulip bulbs at big-box stores like Costco and Home Depot.
