For Galveston’s oleander fans, plant passion blooms eternal
Devotees of the city’s official flower admire its beauty, toughness.
Betty Head remembers stringing oleander blossoms together when she was a young girl growing up in Galveston.
Head, who will turn 89 in July, played with neighborhood friends under the large, fragrant bushes that once lined many island streets. But many of those bushes are gone because they blocked views of drivers turning corners, she said.
“People complained about them,” she said.
While it’s true, as Head admits, that some people just don’t like oleanders, the resilient, flowering evergreen shrubs have special status in Galveston and occupy a special place in the hearts of many islanders. They are the city’s official flower, and for some they embody in plant form those things that make islanders different: They are tough, flourishing here when others have failed; they are stately and colorful in bloom; and they can be dangerous if handled incorrectly.
It’s not by chance that the International Oleander Society is based in Galveston. The group — which aims “to promote, carry on, and aid in every way the development, improvement and preservation of oleanders of all kinds, including the importation and improvement by cultivation and hybridization of oleanders,” among numerous other similar endeavors — will turn 50 this year.
Head has been part of those efforts almost from the beginning, having served in various society posts on and off since she joined it in 1970. She may be to the society what the oleander is to Galveston, and two years ago, the society named a park after her, the Betty Head Oleander Garden Park.
In September, city officials tried to buy an old Dairy Queen property with plans to move the oleander garden to that site. But the negotiations fell through, city spokeswoman Jaree Fortin said.
The city would have entered into an agreement with the Mary