By Brian Trompeter
Vienna residents and visitors now can get some exercise, learn about three dozen kinds of flowers and visit scores of town businesses by taking part in the new “Vienna in Bloom Streetscape Tour.”
The 0.75-mile-long, self-guided walking tour takes participants along Maple Avenue and the historic section of Church Street, where the town has installed new streetscape elements.
Since officials first presented the renovation plans to the Vienna Town Council in June 2023, the town – in partnership with LSG Architecture and Merrifield Garden Center – has installed 81 planters along Maple Avenue and 41 more along Church Street.
The tour begins and ends at the historic Freeman Store & Museum, 131 Church St., N.E. In addition to visiting both sides of Maple Avenue and Church Street, the tour also will take participants along Lawyers Road and Mill Street, N.E.
The flowers in the planting beds will be in bloom through early September, said Vienna Economic Development director Natalie Guilmeus.
The tour will take visitors past 54 local businesses. It also features stops at the W&OD Regional Trail, Harmony Garden and the Town Green Plaza.
“We’ve gotten great feedback from the businesses,” Guilmeus said. “They’re happy to have people come by to see the flowers and see them.”
Town officials chose the tour route because of its walkability and proximity to customer-facing businesses, she said. The original idea was to have guided walking tours, but with hot summer weather in the offing, the town stuck with self-guided tours instead.
A tour map provides a link to a directory of the town’s businesses and encourages participants to find more information about the flowers using Google Images, iNaturalist or PictureThis.
Town officials ordered 250 copies of the colorful brochure initially, then did a second print run of the same amount, Guilmeus said.
A graphic designer supplied an arresting vertical logo for the tour, with green petals, leaves and stems appearing to grow over cream-colored letters spelling out VIENNA, all set on a blue background.
“We try to be creative here,” Guilmeus said. “It just felt appropriate to lean into the floral theme.”
Lessons learned from the tour’s inaugural year? The town needs to make sure it lists all the businesses within walkable distances of the tour route, brief those enterprises in advance and hold the tour earlier in the year, possibly with guided tours in the cooler months, she said.
The tour is good for residents and businesses and “really improves the town,” said Vienna Mayor Linda Colbert. The mayor recalled that when she first was elected, a business owner in the tour area displayed flowers she had planted near the street. The woman wondered why she’d had to plant them in the first place and the mayor agreed the town should be handling that task.
Colbert later walked along Maple Avenue with Vienna Parks and Recreation Director Leslie Herman and they encountered planters in a wide range of condition, including completely bare.
Colbert brought up the need for streetscape improvements and the rest of the Town Council agreed the upgrades were needed both along Maple Avenue and Church Street. Challenges since then have included improving irrigation systems for the flower beds and ensuring they are properly weeded, the mayor said.
“We’ve spent a lot of money and residents expect it to look good,” she said.
The improvements also have caught the eye of business owners elsewhere in town and officials are considering expanding streetscape efforts elsewhere.
“On the other end of town, they want some love, too,” Colbert said. “Some want [streetscape upgrades] extended west. That’s the next thing to look at.”
Relations between the business community and town government at times were frosty decades ago, but town officials several years ago created and staffed Vienna Economic Development, which has pursued multiple initiatives to bolster Vienna’s commercial prospects.
The Vienna Planning and Zoning Department has improved its procedures and the town strove hard during the pandemic to keep local establishments afloat, the mayor said.
The Vienna Business Association, created more than a decade ago, also has been more attentive to town business needs than the Tysons-focused chamber of commerce that preceded it, Colbert said.
“From what I hear, businesses have felt more supported and listened to,” she said.
To learn more about the tour, and access a link to its brochure, go to www.exploreviennava.com/post/streetscape-tour.
