Firefighters put up a mural built from the remnants of the Almeda Fire. The art piece is currently on display at the Phoenix Grange.

Medford has the Pear Blossom Festival, Talent has the Harvest Festival and organizers of the first-ever Phoenix Flower Festival hope to make it the signature festival of the city.

As flowers line Highway 99 and streets throughout Phoenix, visitors are encouraged to celebrate the vibrance, growth and resilience of the town and its community.

The full-day event is free and set for 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 7, hosted at numerous spots and venues around downtown Phoenix, including the Phoenix Grange, the Firebrand Resiliency Collective building, the Oregon Cheese Cave and more.

Local businesses in and around Phoenix will collaborate in a variety of ways, offering live music and dancing, kids activities, vendors, food and refreshments and more.

“You don’t have to spend anything, and you can still dance and listen to music and engage with people,” said Branddy Walter, co-host of the festival, event and rental manager for the Grange and a local nurse practitioner.

Co-hosting with Walter and managing the business side is Mélodie Picard, owner of the Oregon Cheese Cave, as well as Carolyna Marshall, of the 1st Phoenix Community Center, aiding with the history and volunteer side of the festival.

Entertainment includes live surf rock from The Reverberays from 1-3 p.m. at Firebrand Resiliency Collective, food trucks at several locations to grab a bite, refreshments at the Grange, tea samples from Tea Leaves and Tarot, West Coast Swing lessons and dancing from 6-9 p.m. at the Grange and more.

The event will be full of celebration and will also continue a tradition of the actions of community members who laid out countless flowers along the streets of Phoenix to honor the victims of the Almeda Fire on Sept. 8, 2020, which took the lives of three people and burned more than 2,500 structures from Ashland north to Phoenix.

“We’re going to just see how many dang sunflowers we can get out there, and do we care if it’s a dahlia? No, we do not,” Marshall said. “We are a welcoming and affirming flower festival; it can be any flower.”

The idea to start the Phoenix Flower Festival came from Walter, who brought the plan to Picard.

“I wanted to get other businesses involved, so I reached out to Mélodie, and she’s been so helpful in connecting with other small businesses in town, and Carolyna with the historical aspect, plus all of the volunteering,” Walter said.

The flowers on the sidewalk continue a tradition in remembrance of the day the fire struck Phoenix and surrounding communities.

“The 1st Phoenix Community Center and Bee Sweet Blooms combined to do those on the sidewalk, so we’ve been doing it the last three years in remembrance of Sept. 8 (2020),” Picard said. “We’re hoping everybody is going to put some flowers on the sidewalk to make Phoenix really pretty and welcoming and happy.”

Organizers have been coordinating with multiple businesses and volunteers in the community to get as many flowers as possible. Helpers include the First Presbyterian Church in Phoenix, Ashland’s Waterleaf Farm, the Phoenix Community Garden and others.

Supporters can donate flowers at the Oregon Cheese Cave (312 N. Main St.) or 1st Phoenix Community Center (121 Second St.).

“All kinds of flowers — plastic flowers, paper flowers, flower art. I’m making a cheese plate where you can eat your flowers,” Picard said. “We’re looking for a lot of donations of flowers and (flower-holding) receptacles and time.”

The event will also fundraise for a mural painted on the side panel of a van burned in the Almeda Fire. Organizers aim to keep the art piece — since cut away from the side of the burned van — in Phoenix long term at its current location at the Grange.

“We went through something terrible together and it traumatized us and we grieved together … I want us to live together and hold those lessons we learned in our grief and make something beautiful out of it,” Walter said.

While the trauma of the fire serves as a reminder of the fragility of life and the necessity of a supportive and prepared community, organizers hope the festival highlights that Phoenix is not only rebuilding, but growing and improving.

“It means we’re moving; we are not just rising up out of the ashes, we’re moving forward,” Marshall said. “We want to remind people that this is here, and to have a healthy community, we need to keep doing these things.”

“The more community building that we do, the larger the outcome we have in good health and better places for our children to grow up in,” Walter said. “We’re trying to build a community where everybody can show up and everybody is welcome and everybody can participate.”

“Things are blooming,” Walter added.

For more information on the Phoenix Flower Festival, visit the Facebook page.