Their vibrant handiwork brings dashes of color and beauty to every corner of Franklin.
Oversized pots filled with begonias and cannas surround the courthouse square. Roses and hydrangeas are arranged artfully outside of the city hall. Beds of black-eyed Susans and a variety of hostas make up beds in every one of the city’s parks.
Nyla Hilt and Nancy Smith have spent years taking care of flowers in public areas.
“We just want to take care of our city, our community and our parks. That’s why we love doing this,” Smith said.
Hilt and Smith are the city’s “keepers of the flowers,” bearing responsibility for planning out, and caring for, planters, gardens and other natural areas throughout Franklin. Planning for new beds and displays starts in March, and they keep working all the way into the fall.
“We get a lot of compliments on them, and it gets in your blood a little bit,” Hilt said. “It’s hard work. It looks glamorous, but we’re actually crawling all over Franklin.”
The contributions Smith and Hilt have made to the city may not get a lot of attention, but their flowers have, said Holly Johnston, community events and program director for Franklin Parks and Recreation. What they do is important to making the city what it is.
“These ladies bring the beauty to the parks department and the city. Our downtown is beautiful but the flowers make it special and welcoming,” she said. “They just don’t take care of the flowers downtown and in the parks either. They have a hand in all of the roundabouts, too. These ladies definitely have green thumbs.”
Driving around downtown Franklin in a parks and recreation truck, Hilt and Smith pointed out their favorite collections of flowers.
A line of planters featuring begonias and small palms create a tropical feeling at the Franklin Family Aquatic Center. Towering cannas line the city’s recreation center, before giving way to large containers filled with bright yellow lantana.
Inside Kuji Alley, between East Court and Water streets, soothing varieties of coleus and Mezoo trailing red livingstone daisies create a lush nook for people to sit and relax.
“We like this combination, it’s really colorful and nice to look at,” Smith said.
Hilt started working flower duty in 2010, after retiring from state government. She was looking for a way to spend her free time, and saw an advertisement by the parks department looking for seasonal workers.
Smith, who also worked in state government, joined Hilt in 2014.
“We both wanted something to do outside; we like the outdoors,” Smith said.
They work with nurseries in the area, such as Whipker’s Market and Greenhouse in Columbus, to put together the planters and arrangements that will work best in different spots.
“We’re looking for color, and something that’s not dropping (flowers) all over the place,” Smith said.
Three times a week, the pair head off across the city, watering every bed and planter. Massive water tanks loaded on trucks and all-terrain vehicles make it easy to zoom around the city. But some areas are inaccessible to vehicles; alleys and other hard-to-reach planters require them to fill up watering cans to water by hand.
They estimate that every week, they carry 105 gallons of water around the city, Hilt said.
They also fertilize the plants to ensure healthy blooms. As they’re caring for the plants, they also keep an eye out for any weeds.
Hilt and Smith have a motto while they work.
“If you see a weed, pull it,” Hilt said.
Their work takes them across the city, from the roundabout near Interstate 65 to gardens on West Jefferson Street, from the Franklin Police Department to South Main Street.
“East, west, north, south and everywhere between,” Smith said.
The project gets bigger and bigger every spring. New gardens around city roundabouts, planters lining the stage of the DriveHubler.com Amphitheater, and repaired landscaping at city hall are all recent additions.
The city hall project was designed on the fly after repairs to the building and painting its exterior left the garden bed outside the entrance in ruins.
“We had to throw it all together, so we just had to come up with a game plan quickly,” Hilt said. “We went through and figured it out.”
They have requests for even more planters, such as additional displays at Youngs Creek Park and one near Toodleydoo Toys.
Smith and Hilt enjoy what they do, and hear from local officials and residents all the time how good the flowers look. They take pride in their work and believe Franklin wouldn’t have the same look and feel without the accents they care for.
But they also realize that most people don’t know the effort that goes into maintaining that beauty.
“If it was just watering flowers, that would be one thing. But it’s all of these other places and other things we do. I don’t think people realize what we do,” Hilt said.
