Spring Obsession To Spring Up At Lake Crago Park This Saturday
by James Coulter
Spring is in the air, the time of year to get started planting a garden. While some amateur gardeners are content with run-of-the-mill flowers and vegetables, other people yearn for more “exotic” foliage, plants that you usually can’t find locally.
If you’re looking for a unique spruce to spruce up your home landscape, or a peculiar petunia to plant, or a veritable vegetable to harvest, you can find what you are looking for, or what you may not have known you were looking for, at the upcoming Spring Obsession this Sat., Mar. 13 at Lake Crago Park in Lakeland.
“We have a lot of vendors with a lot of plants and trees you cannot find anywhere else,” explained Kathy McGee. “For me, I enjoy seeing all the unusual plants that you don’t generally see with Home Depot and Lowes or the different nurseries.”
Hosted by the Rotary Club of Lakeland, the annual outdoor garden show showcases a diverse selection of plants and trees, along with birdhouses, jewelry, home decor, and other ornamental items for your outdoor area. Many of these vendors are outside the local area from Orlando and Tampa, so you’ll be sure to find something you otherwise couldn’t obtain locally.
The local children’s museum will also erect a children’s tent to provide fun activities such as arts and crafts to the youngest attendees. Two seminars will also be hosted on agriculture and landscaping topics.
Hamburgers, hot dogs, and other barbecue items will be served by Rotarians, while various door prizes from local businesses will be announced throughout the day to random guests. All proceeds from the event will be used to purchase defibrillators for the local police department to place within their squad cars for emergencies.
Spring Obsession was initially hosted in Munn Park by various Downtown Lakeland vendors. The Rotary Club had since taken the reigns of its operations five years ago, around the same time that McGee came on board.
The outdoor event would be hosted last year as initially scheduled, but it was canceled only a few days prior due to the current COVID-19 crisis. Spring Obsession will be hosted this year at a new venue at Lake Crago Park.
“This year, we decided it was a good year to move it from Munn Park where there is limited parking, and everything is crowded together, to go to the new Lake Crago Park,” McGee explained. “There we can space out more; we have more spacing between all the vendors. We have the same amount of vendors that we had last year.”
The new venue will provide not only more space, but also a lovely landscape to host an event. As the park is brand new, having opened last year, the event will also help promote the area and encourage people to visit it and perhaps even frequent it soon.
Due to the current pandemic, special precautions are being taken to ensure public health and safety. Masks will be required, hand sanitizer will be provided at vendors, and temperature checks will be required for entry to the two seminars.
Furthermore, as the event was canceled last year, additional advertising was implemented this year, with radio ads, print ads in local publications such as The Ledger, and on their own Facebook page.
“It is a beautiful park,” McGee said. “We are trying to make it a really good event so people keep coming back and people can keep coming back each and every year.”
Spring Obsession will be hosted Sat., Mar. 13 8 AM – 3 PM. The event will be hosted at Lake Cargo Park, 525 Lake CragoDr. Lakeland, FL 33805. For more information, visit their website at: https://springobsession.org/
