Foothill Flowers working on Rose Parade floats for 14th year

Todd Johnson, whose family owns the popular Foothill Flowers florist in downtown Grass Valley, is traveling to Pasadena this week to help build Rose Parade floats for the 14th straight year.

It is an honor and endorsement of the quality of Foothill Flowers’ work. “I’m leaving soon to head down to work with Fiesta Parade Floats,” says Todd. “This is my 14th year. I’m going to be working on Beverly Hills Pet Care Foundation and Sea World floats.”

The 125th Rose Parade, themed “Dreams Come True,” will feature floral floats, spirited marching bands and high-stepping equestrian units along the 5 1/2 mile route down Colorado Boulevard.

Last year Todd worked on three of the floats that won major awards in the Rose Parade.

The volunteers work tomorrow until New Year’s Eve on the floats. Fiesta’s 13 floats this year require more than 10,000 cumulative hours for completion.

Fiesta Parade Floats has a prize winning rate of more than 65 percent for the past 25 years, the highest prize winning rate in the Rose Parade, and it has built the last 20 Sweepstakes Trophy winning floats.

To get an idea how elaborate the floats are, here is the description for the Beverly Hills Pet Care Foundation float: “Colorful rotating floral-graphs take center stage and are artistically crafted in an array of natural materials including yellow and gold strawflower petals, blue and purple sinuate statice, green manzanita leaves and parsley flakes, white sweet rice, gold and brown flax seeds, gray poppy seed black onion seed and orange lentils.

“The color and texture of fuzzy animal fur on the sculptured dog and cat has been created in curly white coconut chips, dark brown nyjer seed, gold strawflower petals, orange-red safflower spice, silky grass, uva grass and pampas grass. Adoring eyes are decorated in black seaweed, green split peas, brown flax seed and sweet rice powder.

“Over 15,000 brilliant red and hot pink roses create the heart-filled gardens and topiary trees framing the float. Thousands of lavender Bombay and purple dendrobium orchids cascade from trees with trucks of malaleuca bark. Floral boxes and steps are fashioned from crisp white sweet rice and coconut flakes with accents of cream colored cornhusk. Specialty lawns of freshly grown soil-less grass complete the outdoor garden scene. Colorful floral displays in orange, purple, red and pink feature bird of paradise, ginger, heliconia, liatris and anthuriums which frame the floral-graphs and float.”

More details are here.

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