Waco History Podcast

Even with its dry spells, wind, and blistering heat, Waco has enjoyed a bounty of flowers over the years. Mary Sendón recalls the Cotton Palace expositions held in the early 1900s in the Bell's Hill area: "They kept the grounds so beautiful. You never saw so many chrysanthemums in all your life as you would see at the Cotton Palace. They planted those things early. Every row that led up to the new—there were several different areas—they led to the main building—and every one was bordered with chrysanthemum flower beds. And they had the flower building, the florist building there, with all of the flowers. Florists came together even from outside and had beautiful arrangements." Florist Harry Reed describes a few of the local flowers his family sold before it became common to import flowers from all over the world: "We raised a lot of marigolds in the summertime. That's a crop that you can—an outdoor crop that you can grow. We grew dahlias, a lot of dahlias, because we couldn't get much else. And the flower now