purple

Filly Mingo

Filly-Mingo is the enormous 17 foot tall purple flamingo that lives in front of My Garden Nursery. She was created by two My Garden employees, Morgan and Christopher. Their project was not unlike building a boat in that it required careful design in order to withstand years of wind, rain, and snow. The structure was built of wood and then covered with fiberglass cloth.

Then Morgan and Christopher layered the frame with more fiberglass cloth and resin and then Filly-Mingo was given her signature coat of purple paint. They loaded Filly-Mingo into the truck and drove her all around Bellingham She checked out different locations to see where she wanted to live.

She visited Bellis Fair, Rocket Donuts and Western Washington University. Why Purple Flamingos? Purple represents Alzheimer's research in much the same manner that pink represents breast cancer research. The background story of the purple flamingos is as follows: At our store's original location, a fundraising walk to support the Alzheimer's cause was planned and I wanted to find something purple to place out front of our store to make people smile. I decided upon little plastic purple flamingos and they were such a hit that people wanted to buy them. When we moved our store to Bellingham, I decided to go all in on the purple theme, so we painted the store purple and then we put Filly-Mingo out front. We also have hundreds of the small plastic purple flamingos out front and 10% of the sale from each one goes to the Alzheimer's Association.

Filly-Mingo lives in front of My Garden Nursery for all of Bellingham to see when they drive by. Plus we have added a food truck named after Filly-Mingo called the Purple Flamingo Cafe where you can get yummy sandwiches, truffle fries, coffees, and a frozen blackberry slushy called the Flamingo Freeze. We call our panini sandwiches Flaminis. LOL!

Both my mom and dad had Alzheimer's and that is why we started raising money for the cause. My Garden Nursery together with our customers have raised over $120,000 for the Alzheimer's Association and Dementia Support Northwest.