Dolly Parton tells ‘Good Morning America’ how Dollywood’s Flower & Food Festival is honoring her late mom

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Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts visited Dolly Parton in her Pigeon Forge, Tennessee theme park, Dollywood, this week, just in time for the park’s annual Flower & Food Festival.

The festival takes place from April 23 to June 7 and features more than 500,000 flowers and a series of flower sculptures, according to the park’s website.

But one of the most special of those sculptures is the Coat of Many Colors, named after Dolly’s famous 1971 song and honoring her late mother Avie Lee, who inspired it.

The first time she saw the sculpture, she got “real emotional and took a lot of pictures,” even though she’d already seen a brochure for it, Dolly tells GMA. “Just seeing that whole thing…and just having that big thing there that represents who I am as a person, who my parents were and the kind of mother I was lucky enough to have,” she explains.

“That little coat has carried me so far, it’s kind of like a little signature thing,” the singer adds. “My life has been a life of many colors, not just the coat. It’s very significant to me, but just seeing that whole thing with mom sewing that just made me grateful.”

Dolly gave a live performance of “Coat of Many Colors” for GMA at Dollywood, playing a colorful guitar patterned after the titular coat of the song. 

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