In the past several years, the Flowers Plus! Committee has been busy breathing some fresh vibrancy into Westport, enhancing our civic pride in the place we all call home.

From new holiday lights on the lampposts and the tree on the Library lawn, to installing and maintaining 5 new public flower beds and flower baskets on the Wadhams bridge, expanded bridge flowers in Westport, flower barrels around town, over 300+ lilacs planted including a flush of new dwarf lilac hedges on our main streets, and park benches dedicated to local honorees. 

It’s been an exciting summer, Westport! Change happens every moment as the days run from super hot, super wet, to dry and clear and everything in between! Despite that, the green things are growing with a vigor like never before, and flowers abound.

The Alliance team has spent some dynamic hours working together to celebrate community in the midst of all the flux! July brought a fantastic three-day America’s 250th celebration that surprised and delighted us all, and this weekend is our annual Town-Wide Yard Sale, which grows bigger every year. It’s time for the Second Westport Comprehensive Plan Public Workshop on Wednesday, August 12, so please take advantage of this opportunity to add your voice to the conversation!

We’re right in the deep heart of summer, and it’s time for the Essex County Fair! All of our local farms are overflowing with abundant flowers and produce, farmer’s markets are bustling, Ballard Park is alive with music on Thursday evenings, the Depot Theatre productions are in full swing, and all of our local venues are alive and filling the summer nights with music, games, art and fun ways to socialize. That’s summer in Westport: culturally vibrant, bountiful and festive!

The temperature and humidity are rising, and rising again, just in time for the fourth of July. Thankfully, Saturday may be more than 15 degrees cooler than today! Fans on, fingers crossed. Come join us for a full weekend of celebration for America’s 250th anniversary!

Summer is just so full that there isn’t enough room in one humble newsletter to contain all of it! Here are a few additions of note!

Westport is coming in HOT! We are in the midst of humid days, downpours, unbelievably hot sun, and crazily growing greenery. All of our venues are now open, filled with locals and visitors, and there’s boatloads of activities to fill our warm summer days, from picnics to swimming, dining, catching a play or a music show, a local poetry reading or storytelling evening, or boating on beautiful Lake Champlain, to name a few. July 4th—America’s 250th anniversary—is coming right up to add to the festivities!

With the arrival of June, Westport is gleaming from all the thought and attention the community has invested in the upcoming summer season! The 300+ lilacs that Flowers Plus! has planted all through town are blooming and growing roots for our future lilac festival, and more are being planted as we speak. The roadsides of town are free of literally tons of trash plucked up by numerous volunteers, the Westport Chair Trail is officially open for your aesthetic and town-wandering enjoyment, and the Westport History Trail has been refreshed with new decals, for fun and educational strolls through time.

Summer is coming in for a landing, Westport! We have our usual see-saw between cold raw days and warm, sunny dreamy days, the mix that brings drifts of flowers, juicy tomatoes, and strolls that fill the senses! Soon the Crabapple trees throughout town will be dripping with fragrant blossoms. Can’t wait! All of the businesses and organizations in town are also spilling over with cultural offerings to delight the mind, soul and heart.

The month of May is upon us and the wheels of summer are rolling! Here’s just a few Alliance projects to keep your eyes open for: Just in time for National Walking Month, the Westport Chair Trail is reopening for beautiful strolls through town! The oversized locally built Westport chairs are all painted by artists, transforming the town into a walking museum. The Westport History Trail is also getting a reboot, and new decals will be coming soon: scan the bar code on each one and learn some local history! The slow food planter will emerge from hibernation soon and grace the corner across from JAMBS with flourishing edible plants.

The engines of summer are rumbling up from the earth as April leans toward May. So many activities have been dreamt up over the long cold winter that they are tumbling over one another for attention; so hello, May, lets plunge into the balmy green season!

Happy spring everyone! The air turns balmy and freezing again by turns, but generally things are warming up and the sun is gracing our days more often. The ice on Lake Champlain has finally fractured into millions of sparkling, floating sculptures and sheets, which sound like a chorus of small bells with the incoming waves.The Canada geese are beginning their yearly pairing, and every day more of their avian compatriots arrive on our shores and fields.

It’s almost spring! And we’ve had the most amazing, sincere winter in a very long time : a true, ski-out-the-back door, skate -across -the lake, frozen pipes kind of winter. Now it’s time to dream about putting away the snow shovels, and watching those first seedlings sprout from the soft, warmed earth.

Wow! What a downright traditional winter it’s been (for those of us over the age of 20)! We’ve had the coldest winter in 17 years, and Lake Champlain froze over completely for the first time since 2019. The old-fashioned ice-over immediately brought out ice fishermen, ice skaters, ice-walkers of all kinds, and the most fun ~ ice boats! For three days in the first two weeks of February an ice boating group converged in Westport for some world-class sailing. The boatmen hailed from all corners: Vermont, Quebec, New York, Connecticut..and are part of a Saratoga-based group. It was exciting and nostalgic to see all this activity on the frozen bay!

Wow! So far, 2026 has been a brilliant, cold and snowy year! Oh, except for that brief rainy part. As they say, “into each life a little rain must fall”…but the bright sunrise pictured above erases all memory of THAT! Thanks to David Howson, for capturing this magnificence in his own back yard, and sharing it with us!

Ahhh..life has quieted down from the holiday rush, we’ve come out the other side of the January thaw and we’re easing back into the thick of a cozy Adirondack winter. No one’s sleeping in this town, though…Westport is truly hopping with options for gathering over great food, drink, activities indoors and out, education and world-class entertainment!

Happy New Year, Westport! May 2026 bring everyone much joy, health and new adventures! We here at the Alliance are ready to jump in, with new leadership, new board members, new staff and loads of new ideas. We hope you will join us at meetings, share your ideas, and volunteer at town-wide events!