Last Saturday, thousands of attendees arrived at Sanchez Farms Santa Maria Tepos Farms in Plant City, where a massive field of marigold flowers and colorful banners welcomed everyone to a family-friendly event.
The Festival de Cempasúchil kicked off on Oct. 15 and features live music, varieties of Mexican food and lots of flowers. People at the event told San Pedro Gazette they were happy, eating good food and enjoying the event despite long lines.
The cempasúchil, or marigold, is a staple in ofrendas (or altars) to remember loved ones who now rest in peace during Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead; a traditional holiday celebrated in Mexican culture every year on Nov. 2.
Marigolds are also important to the ecosystem.
A 2024 Florida International University study highlights that marigolds are effective at cleaning water. The study says that flowers “can help clean polluted waterways, over 12 weeks extracting 52% more phosphorus and 36% more nitrogen than the natural nitrogen cycle removes from untreated water.”
“In our trials of various flowers, giant marigolds stood out as the most successful, producing long, marketable stems and large blooms,” Dr. Locke-Rodriguez said in a study report published in FIU News.
The Festival de Cempasúchil runs through Nov. 2 at Sanchez Farms Santa Maria Tepos Farms in Plant City and is open from 8 a.m.-8 p.m. There’s no cover, but parking is $10 per vehicle.
This story appears courtesy of San Pedro Gazette, which is part of the Tampa Bay Journalism Project (TBJP), a nascent Creative Loafing Tampa Bay effort supported by grants and a coalition of donors who make specific contributions via the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation. If you are a non-paywalled Bay area publication interested in TBJP, please email rroa@cltampa.com. Support San Pedro Gazette by commenting, sharing this on social media, or donating.
This article appears in Oct. 22 – 28, 2026.
