The City is plant­i­ng the seed of May­or Ronald Mor­rell, Jr.’s ini­tia­tive to launch ​“Clean City 2.0” by intro­duc­ing a city flower. The com­mu­ni­ty is invit­ed to cel­e­brate Marion’s offi­cial city flower, the white daisy. The white daisy rep­re­sents puri­ty, love, and new begin­nings, and stems from a spe­cial piece of Mar­i­on's history.  A promi­nent his­tor­i­cal fig­ure in Mar­i­on is Marie Web­ster — one of America’s first female entre­pre­neurs, and an influ­en­tial quilt design­er from the ear­ly 1900s. Her fam­i­ly home, now known as the Marie Web­ster House and home of the Quil­ters Hall of Fame, is where she plant­ed a gar­den which served as inspi­ra­tion in design­ing her pio­neer­ing quilt pat­terns. ​“Marie was the first per­son to write a his­to­ry of quilts. She was a clever busi­ness woman, run­ning her cot­tage indus­try for 30 years. Her flo­ral appliqué designs cre­at­ed at the height of the Arts and Crafts move­ment are still wide­ly appre­ci­at­ed and imi­tat­ed today, more than a cen­tu­ry after her designs were first pub­lished,” explained Deb Gey­er, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Quil­ters Hall of Fame. The white daisy is fea­tured in one of Webster’s quilts and quilt pat­terns sold all over the world. The com­mu­ni­ty will start to see the image of the white daisy pop up around town, and more so, will be encour­aged to plant them around their homes and places of busi­ness to cel­e­brate Marion’s new jour­ney toward a clean­er city. The city flower will con­nect the com­mu­ni­ty as the first phase of the Clean City 2.0 ini­tia­tive, which is May­or Morrell’s main focus in regen­er­at­ing Mar­i­on, pay­ing homage to cam­paigns of the past. May­or Mor­rell stat­ed, ​“Dur­ing my cam­paign, I pledged to the cit­i­zens a ded­i­ca­tion to enhanc­ing the clean­li­ness of our city, and today marks the fruition of that com­mit­ment through the launch of this ini­tia­tive. This endeav­or not only hon­ors our rich his­to­ry but also intro­duces a con­tem­po­rary per­spec­tive as we embark on a com­pre­hen­sive effort to ele­vate the stan­dards of clean­li­ness in our community.” May­or Mor­rell is work­ing with his team to final­ize the goals under Clean City 2.0, and begin to achieve mea­sur­able and vis­i­ble results toward the clean city we all want to see.