I will never look at a flower, cranberry, walnut, split green pea, or blueberry in the same way again. My new appreciation for all-natural plant material was gained when volunteering with Lutheran Hours Ministries to decorate a few of the 39 floats destined for the 135th Tournament of Roses Parade held in 2024.
As a Pedal Pusher, my adventure started on December 29. When entering the Phoenix Decorating Company warehouse in Irwindale, California, I was greeted by large painted structures surrounded by ceiling high scaffolding. I counted 16 floats but there could have been more.
My first assignment was plucking purple mum flowers off the stems and applying glue to the backs. These mums added the elegant glitz to the gigantic cowboy boots on “Cowgirl”, the Cowboy Channel float. Later, I moved into the rose tent, where, for the next 1 1/2 days, I cut, tubed, and stuck thousands of roses into foam boards with hundreds of other volunteers.
On December 31, Pedal Pushers arrived at 6 AM. Unlike other days, volunteers moved en masse from float to float, quickly filling up all empty spaces with flowers and other all-natural materials. My assignment was to create a “water-look” with purple iris on the record-breaking 165 foot long “Jingle on the Waves” float sponsored by Visit Newport Beach. (This float won the 2024 Extraordinaire Award!) When the irises ran out, I was told to removed some of them that I had just poked into the hard foam and spread the remaining further apart to make it look full. Mission accomplished with the help of a few thousand lavender roses someone discovered. An average a float is covered with 35,000-45,000 floral elements. “Jingle” featured 57,211 floral elements, including mums, statice, strawflower, lentils, iris, carnations, and seaweed.
About 11 AM, a bell rang, all float decorating stopped, and the judging began. Each entry was given 10 minutes to perform. This included dancers, singers, and guests riding on the floats. At approximately 2 pm, the drivers crawled into their assigned floats and started the 16 mile trip to Pasadena. Top speed is about 2.5 mph with an estimated arrival time in Pasadena of 8 to 9 pm. Most drivers sleep inside their floats overnight. “It’s just easier that way,” said one driver. He started driving floats when he was 15 years old. This was his 58th parade and he still, “loves it!” His favorite part of the trip is seeing the multitudes of people gathered along the route towards Pasadena.
The parade begins at 8 AM with a B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber flyover. Then floats, bands, and equestrian units make their way down the 5 1/2 mile parade route. When the parade is over, floats are parked near Pasadena High School and on display for two days. Then driven back to the warehouses, this time much faster because no one cares if things fall off or break.
Once back, “The floats just sit here in the warehouse and rot,” a Phoenix employee told me. “Come and take as many flowers as you want,” he urged. Sometime in January, workers rip off the plant material, foam, and skins. Metal structures are cut apart and building starts for the next year.
Float building is a year ’round job. The theme is announced in January. Spoiler alert, the 2025 theme is, “The Best Day Ever!” Structures for most of the floats are finished by mid-summer. Skins and foam are sprayed on the armatures and then color-code painted to indicate what needs to be applied. Volunteers start gluing on non-perishable materials, such as seeds and dried grasses – weeks before the parade.
The bulk of the main flowers – carnations, chrysanthemums, and roses – arrive via cargo planes landing at Southern California airports the last week of December. About 75% of the flowers come from Columbia and 25% from Ecuador. Most of the lesser flowers, dry materials, greens, and alike come from in-state growers.
The minimum spend for a float is $150,000. It was rumored that the 2024 Explore Louisiana float cost almost $1 million. Over 5,000 volunteers are needed to decorate the floats in the Phoenix warehouse alone. There is one other commercial warehouse and a number of self-build sites in the area.
One might think the scent of flowers would be overwhelming. Most flowers had no scent, including the roses. However, the explosion of color, shapes, and sizes of flowers and other materials more than made up for the lack of scent. And, just being a part of creating these amazing works of art alongside hundreds of volunteers was worth it. In the end, the absolute best part of my experience was watching “my” handcrafted sea of blue iris glide along the parade route with 700,000 other parade-goers.
And there’s more…
Is Pedal Pushing in your future?
Visit https://tournamentofroses.com/about/float-decoration-volunteer/ to learn about the program. I booked a tour with 3 days of pedal pushing and a ticket to the parade. I would not do that again. We could only work 8 hours and our hotel was 20 minutes away. My afternoons could have been filled with touring but I didn’t have a car. When I do it again, I will volunteer directly. Shifts are 8 am - 4 pm and 4 pm - 11 pm. It’s easy to sign-up, just follow the links from the Tornament of Roses volunteer page. I worked at Phoenix Decorating Company. They are wonderful people. The key…book your hotel early and if you want to go to the parade, get tickets early. Yes, you can walk up to the parade route, reserving a bleacher seat is much better and guaranteed.