By Bonnie and Bill Neely
For many of us New Year's Day begins with the tradition of watching the beautiful Tournament of Roses Parade preceding the Rose Bowl football game in Pasadena, California. Each year we have marveled at the enormous figures on the floats with intricate designs and wondered how they were covered entirely with real flowers and other plant material in time for the parade.
Then in late December 2016 we got to watch the creation of the floats for the 100th anniversary of this famous parade, begun in 1917. We had to pay admission for viewing the floats at the various sites outside or near the Pasadena Rose Bowl Stadium — Rose Palace, Rosemont Pavilion, Brookside Pavilion and the Rose Float Plaza South, in the city of Irwindale — but what a thrill!
In huge warehouses we watched the hundreds of workers who volunteer to make these impressive and colorful floats. Professional designers and committees are ready with the basic forms of the huge floats set up and waiting for the volunteers who show up from all over the United States and some other countries to be able to tell their friends and family they have helped to create one as the floats go by on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena or on TV sets all over the world.
There were many different workstations set up in each of the barns: glue stations, brush-cleaning places, tables of dried flowers, bark, seeds, herbs, spices, grasses and any other part of nature that could be applied during the two weeks before the big day. Fresh flowers to complete the floats are applied in the last 48 hours before the parade.
To decorate one float, about 60 volunteers work 10 hours a day for 10 days. The group cooperation looked like fun, but the positions they had to stay in for some of the decorating looked painful and tiring. Volunteers ranged from 13 years old to senior citizens, all industriously applying their artistic energies to their particular assigned part of the huge floats.
In the final decorating hours, when the thousands of fresh flowers are applied in small vials as quickly and securely as possible, it takes an amazing 20 daisies, 30 roses or 36 marigolds to cover 1 square foot of a float area. And approximately half a million roses are used in the parade. It takes growers from all over the world to fill and deliver the orders on time. As each float is completed it is moved from the warehouse facility to line up on Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena.
The parade is produced by the nonprofit Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association. In the early days a century ago, when planes did not fly flowers in from all over the world, the flowers were locally grown in the Fanny Morrison Horticultural Center to decorate horse-drawn carriages. Today professionally designed floats are required to be covered with plant material. Three civic and floral industry leaders judge the floats and award prizes in 24 categories. Awards are announced at 6 a.m. on parade day. The length of the parade is 5.5 miles, lasting about 2.25 hours and moving at 2.5 miles per hour.
Plans for next year's floats will begin a few weeks after this year's glory has been dismantled. Designers and architects start their work, and by February the theme for the following year is announced. The fun extends from the day after Christmas until the parade.
WHEN YOU GO
If you'd like to volunteer to work on a Rose Parade float, visit www.tournamentofroses.com/events/float-decorating.
For tickets to the parade, visit www.sharpseating.com/rose-parade-festivities.php.
Bonnie and Bill Neely are freelance writers. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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