The Memorial Day weekend event will feature programs and a movie.
PARIS – The McLaughlin Foundation will celebrate its seventh Lilac Festival on Memorial Day weekend, May 24, 25 and 26. The celebration honors Maine’s largest collection of lilacs and the gardener who assembled the collection, Bernard McLaughlin.
The festival is held in the McLaughlin Garden, 97 Main St., South Paris, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. A $3 donation is requested. Parking during the weekend is available along Western Avenue.
Lilacs will be for sale along with a large selection of perennials and wild flowers. Lakefront Buffer Landscaping, Lilac Care and New England Shrubs will be among the lectures offered.
“Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time” will be sung Saturday and Sunday, and the 1928 silent film of the same name, starring Colleen Moore and Gary Cooper, will be shown all three days.
Light lunches and snacks will be available.
At 11 a.m. on Monday, Memorial Day, national award-winning trader, Dan Lakeman, will return for the fourth year to read Walt Whitman’s tribute to Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.”
The afternoon program remains the same for all three days. The full program is as follows: May 24, 10 a.m., landscaping for lakeshore protection, Colin Holme; 11, care and maintenance of lilacs, Kristin Perry; noon, native woody shrubs of New England; 1 and 1:30 p.m., showing of “Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time.”
May 25: 10 a.m., 1 and 1:30 p.m., “Jeannine, I Dream of Lilac Time”; 11 a.m., care and maintenance of lilacs, Kristin Perry.
May 26: 11 a.m. “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed,” read by Dan Lakeman. Other programs are the same as previous days.
The 4-5-acre McLaughlin Garden is on the National Register of Historic Places and features more than 100 varieties of lilacs in a perennial garden setting. Bernard McLaughlin began collecting lilacs in the 50s and 60s, and was a founding member of the International Lilac Society. The McLaughlin Foundation was formed in 1996 to preserve the historic garden, house and barn after McLaughlin’s death. The foundation operates a gift shop and tea room on site.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
