GREENFIELD — Bikes in Bloom are back in downtown Greenfield and Fortville.
This is the seventh year for Greenfield’s Bikes in Bloom, an annual springtime display organized by Greenfield Main Street.
This is the third year for the downtown Fortville display, put on by the town’s own Main Street organization, Fortville Action Inc.
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“We encouraged the event to brighten our community after so many bleak weeks we’ve endured,” said Jen Sterrett, chairwoman of Fortville Action, Inc.
Both displays will be in place through Father’s Day weekend, with nonprofits and local businesses designing bikes that feature colorful designs and live flowers.
In Greenfield, local nonprofits typically create the bike displays, but businesses were invited to join in this year.
“Since a lot of downtown businesses are closed or were closed, we wanted to allow them a little bit of free advertising and promotion,” said Debra Cochran, executive director for Greenfield Main Street.
More than two dozen colorful bike displays are set up along streets in downtown Greenfield, she said.
As every year, there’s a drive among participants to come up with an eye-catching design that tells the story of their nonprofit or business. The only requirements are that the bikes feature live flowers that are kept watered and maintained throughout the six-week event.
The infusion of flowers and fun to the downtown districts gives people a great reason to come out and see the unique displays. The attraction also will hopefully persuade people to patronize local businesses as they reopen, Cochran said.
“We hope the bikes will give people something fun to look at and brighten their spirits. Right now, that’s what we all need,” she said.
Twenty-three nonprofits and three businesses created displays in Greenfield this year.
One bike in front of the county courthouse features a life-size mannequin sitting on bright blue bike, pulling a little Radio Flyer wagon full of flowers.
Greenfield in Bloom opted to honor local front-line workers with its bike design this year, which features cartoon caricatures of doctors and nurses alongside colorful blooms.
Changing Footprints, a nonprofit dedicated to collecting used footwear for charity, featured a 3-foot-tall ruby slipper on its “Wizard of Oz”-inspired bike.
Jeri Reichanadter, owner of the Indiana Soap. Co., created a bike featuring an antique soap box and a sign with her logo: “Shop small. Stay safe. Wash your hands.”
“I’ve always loved programs like this,” she said of Bikes in Bloom. “Indy has the race cars; Lexington (Kentucky) has the painted horses; Plymouth, Indiana, even has painted blueberries. We have our bikes,” she said.
Cochran encourages everyone to take a stroll around downtown and check out the bikes up close.
A few organizations opted to wait a week to put out their bikes due to overnight freeze warnings, but all bikes should be in place this week and photos of them should appear on Greenfield Main Street’s Facebook page soon, she said.
A panel of judges will select the top two bikes, and a new bicycle will be awarded to those organizations for use in their service areas sometime in June.
Typically, the winners are announced at the Superhero 5K & Fitness Festival the day before Father’s Day, but this year’s event has been postponed to October.
“We’ll probably announce the winners on Facebook Live this year,” Cochran said.
