13th Annual Hibiscus Festival

Digging Punta Gorda event, popular with Cape growers

There’s something about these colorful characters worth celebrating. The 13th annual Hibiscus Festival in Punta Gorda is part beauty pageant, part sale and part music, all about the hardy flower that provides us great joy in the harshest Florida conditions. The Hibiscus Festival is May 1920, with proceeds going to the Charlotte County Historical Center Society. Organizers expect up to 5,000 visitors to the city’s History Park off Shreve. While music and community celebrations are great, the Hibiscus Festival is “mostly about the plants,” says Teresa Desguin, a festival organizer. The hibiscus in its moving dazzle is one of Southwest Florida’s most coveted species. Sunshine State hibiscus chapters are active and recognized, with innumerable homeowners and professional landscapers using garden-variety reds and yellows to decorate. It’s the exotic species, however, that get the juices going. Due to renovations at Gilchrist Park, this year’s Hibiscus Festival was moved to History Park, a perfect outdoor backdrop. Expect world-class hibiscus, exotic florals, fun fauna and beautiful music, Desguin says, adding that the festival also celebrates event founder Dawn MacGibbon, and Harry R. Goulding, a legend who grew hibiscus for over 60 years. He won awards in his time that included the prestigious American Hibiscus Society show’s “Best in the World” category five times. Hibiscus is a shrub that grows big, broad-petaled flowers. One species has been used for paper, others for a tangy tea, as medicine or to signify a woman’s marital status. But Americans mostly are captured by the flower’s larger-than-life beauty, the ability to create hybrids of extreme elegance and color.