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One thing NPR does for you is pay sustained attention to the news. We return to stories after the TV cameras and social media manipulators move on, and that includes this follow-up on Hurricane Helene. When it flooded much of North Carolina last year, people found aid in a park. Laura Hackett of Blue Ridge Public Radio returned there.
LAURA HACKETT, BYLINE: Marco Rosenbruck (ph) is showing off the new garden in Swannanoa's Grovemont Park.
MARCO ROSENBRUCK: Over here, there are double white ones and double pink ones, and there are combinations of all kinds of varieties in this flower bed.
HACKETT: These are all tulips, peonies and daffodils, planted after Helene swept through this community of 6,000. For Rosenbruck, getting the bulbs in the ground was a way to lift his neighbors' spirits.
ROSENBRUCK: Flowers gave hope. When you plant them, you don't know what's coming out. But when you see them in spring, you get happy. Planting a bulb is believing in tomorrow.
HACKETT: The flower aficionado and Dutch immigrant has worked in the tulip trade for decades. So he asked a company from the Netherlands for a few boxes of tulips. What he got was thousands of bulbs.
ROSENBRUCK: We have done it with volunteers. All the materials are for free, and we make the beauty here.
HACKETT: On a bench nearby, Clare Duplace (ph) watches her 6-year-old son Quinn (ph) frolic around the park. It's her first time here since Helene, and she says seeing the flowers was a real moment for her.
CLARE DUPLACE: It feels extra special with everything that we've been through with Helene, to see that level of intention and beauty and care that someone took the time to do.
HACKETT: Swannanoa is still hurting. Their post office and grocery store are gone, and many homes are still damaged. Duplace says it's hard to keep up hope, but the tulips are a reminder.
DUPLACE: Every day, you're seeing the devastation, but you're also seeing, like, everything that's been done and cared for.
HACKETT: For Rosenbruck, the beauty of his tulip project runs deeper than just appearances.
ROSENBRUCK: After the storm, we figured out that community is the basics of everything. People are willing to help each other and to make beauty. Isn't that where humanity is meant to be?
HACKETT: Those in Swannanoa now have a colorful reminder of that generosity each spring when the 10,000 flowers in Grovemont Park blossom.
For NPR News, I'm Laura Hackett in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
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