Before you ever ring the doorbell, you know you've arrived at Peggy McLeland’s house.

In spring, more than 2,100 pink tulips ripple across her front yard. By summer, beds of coral lantana take over. Then Peggy opens the door wearing one of her distinctive pink dresses, her smile every bit as bright as the flowers. The color suits her perfectly: warm, welcoming, impossible to miss.

So it's no surprise that friends affectionately call her the Mayor of Belle Haven.

Born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Peggy still speaks with a Southern drawl as big as the Lone Star State, despite decades in Northern Virginia. She moved to Washington in 1989 to work for Texas Congressman Pete Geren after falling in love with the area during work trips.

"I stayed at the Hay-Adams and went to parties at the French and Italian embassies," she recalls. "I thought, ‘Well fine, I'll just move up here and wear a ball gown all the time.’”

But it wasn't the parties that made her stay.

"It just felt like home."

After a few years on Capitol Hill, Peggy wanted something different—a neighborhood where people knew each other and stayed. In 1995, she bought a ranch house on the edge of the forest in Belle Haven and transformed it into what she calls "a little colonial."

"I've loved living here. I wanted to be around a real neighborhood. I said, ‘I’m going to get involved.’” She did exactly that.

Over the years Peggy has served twice as president of both the Belle Haven Citizens Association and the Belle Haven Women's Club, where she famously preferred themed parties to formal meetings. She's worked the polls at West Potomac High School, served on the Mount Vernon Hospital Development Board and volunteered for countless neighborhood causes.

"I love a good party," she says. "I just made it my mission to make new friends."

Today, half of her garage is devoted to that mission. Known as Peggy's Party Palace, it's packed floor to ceiling with bins of decorations and supplies for nearly every neighborhood tradition: shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day, hundreds of plastic eggs for Easter, Christmas decorations for Santa at the Circle, serving trays, tables and enough party supplies to outfit just about any gathering.

It's also where newcomers often become neighbors.

For all the parties she's hosted over the years, Peggy says one of her favorite Belle Haven memories came during a crisis.

Years ago, while an unfinished hotel was burning along Route 1, she came home to find neighbors gathered in her backyard with buckets and hoses, ready to protect the forest behind their homes.

"I thought, ‘Okay, I do have a community.’”

Thankfully, the wind shifted before the flames reached the woods."If it hadn't, this forest would no longer be here."

Today, Peggy is watching many of those same beloved trees disappear as a major sewer project cuts through her backyard. "I love the forest," she says. "But you don't have a choice."

One more familiar face greets visitors at Peggy's house: Cleopatra—Cleo for short—a 15-year-old corgi-terrier mix with dramatic black markings that look remarkably like eyeliner.

The shelter had named her Blondie, but that didn’t fit. “She looked like a queen,” Peggy said. So Cleopatra she became.

Whether she's welcoming new neighbors into Peggy's Party Palace, tending thousands of pink flowers or organizing the next community celebration, Peggy has spent three decades building the neighborhood she hoped to find.

She came looking for a community. Belle Haven found its mayor.