Talk About Bowling Green: Flora is Missing!

Flora is missing.

No, not your favorite injury lawyer (though I really can’t say where she is, either).

Bowling Green’s Fountain Square Park has a wonderful, bubbling fountain surrounded by an iron fence that makes a perfect picturesque backdrop for weddings, concerts, senior photos, gay hook-ups, and drug deals.

Reserved for Flora

What are often overlooked by many park wanderers as they face the fountain are the four statues behind them. When the fountain was placed in the park in April 1872, also added for your viewing pleasure were four statues intended to represent the four seasons. It was with great foresight that our city leaders of the time funded all four, since I’m pretty sure our current crop would leave one out; probably winter, since no one seems to like winter here.

(The original fountain rotted out pretty quick and the one you see now was put there in 1881, but that’s another story.)

The city’s website explains the statues thusly:

The statues surrounding the fountain represent the mythological figures of Ceres (goddess of grain), Pomona (goddess of fruit), Melpomane (goddess of tragedy) and Flora (goddess of flowers.) The Fiske Company of New York cast the four statues as well as the two urns at the east and west ends of the park. They are mounted on locally quarried limestone.

Pomona

They’re all nice lookers, but there’s a problem: Flora is missing.

Apparently one of our July storms hit the trees in Fountain Square pretty hard, and in an ironic twist of fate our local flora decapitated Flora. The big old tree next to her finally got tired of looking at her, and dropped its decaying limbs directly on top of her. The city subsequently took the big axe to the offending tree, ensuring the safety of Flora’s remaining limestone mount.

Landscape guy Jay Dougherty

Ceres

City landscape division manager Jay Dougherty told the BGDN that Flora is in three big pieces with about 10 smaller chunks, and she has some bends and cracks, as well. He’s really upset about it, too. You can tell from the BGDN photo by Miranda Pederson that he can barely hold back the tears.

There’s no mention in the BGDN article of a date that a mended (or replacement) Flora will be reperched in the park, only that she’s irreplaceable.