Pink flowers now line more than 800 feet of downtown Sapulpa, Oklahoma, forming a continuous bubblegum-colored ribbon along the city’s central corridor. The city of Sapulpa paid for the Bubblegum Super-tunias and uses them to add color and vibrancy to the downtown district, and the blooms are expected to stay in place through the beginning of October.
The flowers don’t survive Oklahoma’s summer heat on their own. As News On 6 reported, Ken Daniel has tended the Bubblegum Super-tunias for about a year, and ongoing care has helped the flowers thrive, creating a consistent visual feature throughout downtown. That daily attention lines up with details from Kent Daniel of Daniel Plant Farm, who according to the Sapulpa Times oversees morning hand-watering and weekly liquid fertilizer applications to keep the hanging baskets alive when temperatures climb past 100 degrees. Manual watering happens daily alongside the city’s automated downtown irrigation systems, per the same account.
A Flower Strain Built for Punishing Heat
The variety behind the display, Proven Winners’ Supertunia Vista Bubblegum, isn’t an accident of landscaping. Commercial retailer specifications published by Lowe’s show the variety has won more than 300 national trial awards for disease resistance, heat tolerance, and self-cleaning blooms that don’t require deadheading. Mature plants can reach up to 2 feet tall and trail 3 to 4 feet wide, qualities that help explain why the strain was chosen for a stretch of street where consistent color matters more than delicate upkeep.
Downtown Sapulpa has embraced flower displays as a community identity marker before. The Sapulpa Times reported that the city held its inaugural Petunia Fest in 2023, an event featuring guest speakers on pollinators and a charity auction of petunia-filled concrete planters to raise money for civic beautification.
Flowers Bloom Along a Freshly Rebuilt Route 66 Corridor
The petunias now sit along a downtown corridor that looks nothing like it did a couple of years ago. KRMG reported that Sapulpa officially reopened Dewey Avenue in January following a 10-month streetscape overhaul that reduced Route 66 through downtown from four lanes to two, widened sidewalks, and added dedicated planter infrastructure. The station also reported that the newly installed light poles along Dewey Avenue were engineered to double as structural support for hanging seasonal displays, including overhead holiday light canopies that will eventually span both traffic lanes…