Spring Fever to return to Winter Garden

Winter Garden’s Libby Drose views the annual Spring Fever in the Garden as a puzzle.

Every piece is needed to make the puzzle complete, ensuring a successful two-day festival in downtown Winter Garden. 

Drose, one of three co-chairs of the Spring Fever, admires the logistics of the festival despite the countless hours she gives to organizing, coordinating and leading others to make every decision necessary in the yearlong planning. 

The past year will end with Drose volunteering alongside her co-chairs, Nancy Krug and Ashley Lockyer, and at least 150 other Winter Garden Bloom and Grow Society members, culminating in more than 650 volunteer hours during this year’s Spring Fever in the Garden Saturday, April 11, and Sunday, April 12, on Plant Street. 

But before the event starts at 9 a.m. Saturday, April 11, monthly meetings and countless hours of evaluating successes and areas for improvement from the previous year’s festival, coordinating committees and organizing every detail of the festival that drew 70,000 people to Plant Street over two days last year must occur.

“We can’t do it without the membership,” Drose said. 

The Bloom and Grow Society and Spring Fever both are 100% volunteer driven, but Drose said the festival also wouldn’t be possible without the partnership with the city of Winter Garden, especially the city’s Parks and Recreation staff, the police and fire departments and public works. 

The festival started 24 years ago on three blocks on Plant Street. It has grown to span a half-mile each way down the street with more than 100 vendors and 70,000 attendees. 

There are 15 committees involved, charged with different responsibilities from handling vendors to coordinating volunteers to finding sponsorships to organizing the sidewalk chalk portion and Kid Zone. 

The committees work together to map out the festival, ensuring there is a variety of vendors, new vendors provide new options and everyone has what they need for success. They ensure there is plenty of entertainment for all ages, and there are experts available to answer any and all questions from attendees about plants and more. 

“There is a massive amount of detail management and checking because mistakes happen,” Krug said.

More than 100 vendors will line Plant Street for the festival. Drose said a challenge for this year’s festival was the change of date compared to previous years. She said the festival usually is held the first weekend of April, but because Easter was the first weekend of April this year, the festival had to be moved. As a result, return vendors already had scheduled events for Saturday, April 11, and Sunday, April 12. However, the Vendor Committee was able to  secure 28 new vendors. 

“You want to bring in new people as well, because you want to know what to expect, but you also want to find something unique and things somebody else doesn’t have,” Drose said. 

Although a majority of the Bloom and Grow Society’s nearly 200 members volunteer in some way, Krug said organizing the volunteers can be a challenge. It’s a tremendous effort to ensure every shift is covered and volunteers know where to go.

At the festival, Lockyer said “it’s a beautiful scene” watching everyone enjoy the festival.

“We just take in that feeling when everybody is here and you see all these people who have come from all over the state, and they’re just so in awe of what a charming town we live in and how nice the festival is and the selection of the merchandise and plants,” Lockyer said.