City parks fill with thousands of new flowers

If you think your backyard planting is a bit much, consider this: Every year, the city of Sioux Falls plants roughly 20,000 flowers throughout the park system.

Tackling it all includes volunteer help — something that started during the pandemic when the parks department had hardly any seasonal staff, but has continued.

“Volunteers assist with the initial planting, and then it is park staff that maintain the flowers through the growing season,” park superintendent Josh Johnson said.

You can find the flowers primarily at the following parks: Falls, McKennan, Sherman, Terrace, Tuthill and Veterans. They’re also at the Mary Jo Wegner Arboretum, the USS South Dakota Battleship Memorial and throughout planters in downtown Sioux Falls.

“These areas consist mostly of our gardens and wedding locations,” Johnson said. “McKennan and Tuthill are known for their flower beds. We are always trying new varieties with old reliables mixed in.”

Most of the city’s larger regional parks have flowers, he said.

In neighborhood parks, “we try to maintain a variety of ornamental grasses, shrubs or perennials as those are lower maintenance than annuals.”

With the warmer weather expected, watch for the flowers to be in full bloom within three or four weeks, Johnson said.