On Sunday, Tisbury resident Melly Meadows McCutcheon, with help from two friends, planted dozens of daffodil bulbs in the raised islands of the Vineyard Haven Post Office parking lot.
Meadows, who wants to plant 15,000 bulbs in total across the Vineyard, is one week into her efforts for this season.
She says that she planted 8,000 bulbs last year, and part of the Tisbury resident’s goal is to see the yellow blooms in locations across Martha’s Vineyard come springtime. For now, Meadows is primarily focusing on sites in Vineyard Haven.
Meadows refers to her efforts in public spaces as “‘guerrilla gardens,'” though she has also planted daffodils at her residence in Vineyard Haven.
Her vision for a more floral Vineyard is inspired by ongoing health struggles, as well as her past career as an actress and international brand spokesperson.
“I hope that when [people] see this in the spring, that they’re going to say, ‘Oh, that’s really cool, we need to get more daffodils on the Island,” Meadows said on Sunday.
Meadows, originally from Clayton County, Ga., worked in the 1990s as a spokesperson for Coca-Cola, representing its Georgia Coffee brand in the role of Scarlett O’Hara from the film “Gone with the Wind.” While working for Coca-Cola, Meadows met with multiple heads of state and dignitaries, and worked abroad in Japan. She also worked as a ballerina, and as a writer, director, and choreographer of multiple plays.
According to Meadows, at the height of her career, she became ill with systemic lupus erythematosus. The autoimmune disease causes inflammation and tissue damage, and as a result, Meadows contracted pulmonary arterial hypertension; she has also experienced impacts on her heart, brain, muscles, and skin. Meadows has had to give up practicing the performing arts, and still spends much of her time in hospitals as her disease gets more difficult.
“Last year, I was in the hospital 95 days,” said Meadows. Gardening is her relief and passion: “Basically, every time I get out of a hospital, I get back to planting.”
Meadows, who also cited the popular story of Sadako Sasaki — a child with leukemia who folded 1,000 paper cranes — views planting daffodils as a way to reach people and to spread joy outside the performing arts. “Since I can no longer dance, and choreograph big dance numbers, I can plant, and in my heart, it’s as if I’m giving back to the Earth more ballerinas,” Meadows said.
While being interviewed by The Times, Meadows handed out bags of deer-resistant bulbs to multiple passersby.
“[For] everybody who shows up to plant, I say, ‘OK, you’re officially now in the Be Kind Club,” Meadows said.
“If people are interested [in helping], it’d be great,” she added. “We’ve got a lot of bulbs. The idea: We want to try to cover Vineyard Haven, and then grow from here. So this will be like the ground zero for ‘Daffodil Haven,’ and then it’ll spread.”
Apart from planting around the Post Office, on Saturday Meadows planted bulbs in a heart shape on a hill at a Vineyard Haven cemetery.
