Lombard ready to celebrate Lilac Time with 19-day celebration

If history is a reliable guide, lilacs are about to pop out and party down.

In Lombard, the Lilac Village, their festive and fragrant emergence is being heralded with fanfare — no less than a 19-day celebration known as Lilac Time.

Observed for more than 80 years, the celebration usually attracts about 8,000 visitors.

During the party that began Wednesday and continues through May 19, the flowering plants that proliferate in Lilacia Park will be celebrated with a parade, concerts, heritage tours, plant sales and an elegant ball.

“It's my favorite time of year,” says Sarah Richardt, executive director of the Lombard Historical Society and member of the Lombard Park District board.

The historical society will offer lilac heritage tours at Lilacia Park at 2 p.m. May 4 and 1 p.m. May 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16 and 17 and 11 a.m. May 12, Mother's Day. There's a kids tour of the park, too, at 4 p.m. May 16.

“We'll be talking about the history. We'll be talking about the botany,” Richardt says.

The group also will conduct evening botanical tours from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. May 8 and 14.

Richardt says tour guides will tell visitors about the wide variety of lilac cultivars and bushes and which of those live in the 8-acre Lombard park.

There are 20 species of the plant, she says, and 10 are featured here.

Richardt says Lombard largely owes its lilac collection to Col. William R. Plum and his wife, Helen, who began bringing species back home to Lombard from their travels in the early 1900s.

Downtown Lombard will host a Lilac Time Art and Craft Fair from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, May 5, along St. Charles Road, between Main and Elizabeth streets.

The Lombard Garden Club will have a bush sale and the park district will have a plant sale from 3 to 7 p.m. May 9 and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. May 10.

Lilac Time also will include a May 17 beer tasting and a May 18 wine tasting that will be preceded by a pancake breakfast. The 14th annual Lilac Mutt Strut 5K, for people and their canines, will be at 8 a.m. May 18 in Lilacia Park.

The Lilac Queen will be crowned at 1 p.m. Saturday, May 4, in the park and that officially marks the beginning of the celebration, says Griffin Price, park district marketing and communications manager.

Even before the queen is named, there will be a Little Lady Lilac Ball for dads and daughters ages 3 to 11 on Friday, May 3, in the Lombard Community Building.

Adults can enjoy dinner, dancing, raffles and a silent auction at the Lilac Ball, presented by the Lombard Area Chamber of Commerce, from 6 to 10 p.m. May 10 at The Carlisle. Tickets are $85.

Concerts will include a show featuring Bopology from 2:30 to 4 p.m. May 4 in Lilacia Park; children's shows with musician Laura Doherty from 10 to 10:45 a.m. May 7 and May 8 in the Helen Plum Library; and a Mother's Day concert in Lilacia Park from 2 to 3:30 p.m. May 12 with rock cover band One Foot in the Groove. Miss Jamie from the Farm will present a kids' musical program at 2 p.m. May 11 in the park.

Lilac Time culminates with the Lilac Parade that steps off at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, May 19, from Main and Wilson streets. With the village celebrating the 150th year of its founding, the parade's theme will be “Happy 150th Birthday.”

Always a popular event locally, Richardt says this year's celebration seems to be attracting lilac lovers from farther afield.

Several groups have booked bus tours to Lilacia Park. “This year for some reason we have lots of those tours booked to the point where we're sold out,” she says.

Lilac Time

<b>Where:</b> Lilacia Park, 150 S. Park Ave., Lombard

<b>When:</b> Through May 19

<b>Info:</b> <a href="http://www.lombardlilactime.com">lombardlilactime.com</a>, <a href="http://www.lombardhistory.org">lombardhistory.org</a>, <a href="http://www.lombardlilacparade.com">lombardlilacparade.com</a>, <a href="http://www.lombardparks.com">lombardparks.com</a>