Floral festival returns to Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden

The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden is hosting Dallas Blooms, its annual floral festival featuring hundreds of thousands of flowers and eight sculptures of historical figures.

This year, Dallas Blooms will feature 500,000 spring-blooming bulbs, 3,000 azaleas and 125 blooming Japanese cherry trees, said Dave Forehand, vice president of gardens at the arboretum, at a press event Feb. 24. More than 125 varieties of tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and other flowers will bloom throughout the course of the festival.

For a third year, sculptor Gary Lee Price’s art will be on display at the arboretum during the festival. The sculpture exhibition, titled “Great Contributors,” will feature realistic bronze statues of eight historical figures: Amelia Earhart, Harriet Tubman, Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa, Ruby Bridges, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain.

Price said during the Feb. 24 event that this year’s version of the “Great Contributors” intentionally includes several female figures. Last year, the exhibit focused on mainly male figures such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. This year, he said he wanted to diversify the lineup and “acknowledge everybody and all their contributions to humanity.”

The exhibit is intended to normalize major historical figures and show people their human qualities, Price said. Each sculpture is seated on a bench so that guests can sit next to them and interact with the sculptures.

“They’re just like us. They’re just people that have great qualities, both good and bad,” Price said. “I want to bring them down to earth and put them on the benches, so we can sit with them and have a conversation with them.”

The festival will run through April 16. For more information, visit the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden’s website.