Home and Garden Show Beginning to Blossom
A holiday atmosphere prevailed at the Anaheim Convention Center on Thursday as about 50 nurserymen, landscapers and floral designers bustled to unwrap exotic blooms for the 31st annual Southern California Home and Garden Show.
Just before sunrise Tuesday, trucks lumbered through the elephant-sized doors of the convention center and dumped 75 tons of peat moss onto the floor.
“It’s not peat moss, exactly. It’s really pre-sterilized forest humus, which is cleaner than peat moss, with no bugs,” explained Jim Delamore, director of the show, which opens a nine-day run Saturday.
The flowers and more than 1,200 trees at a total cost of $200,000 will form a background for 600 home and garden exhibits ranging from hot tubs to German-made knives to patio furniture once the show is under way.
Ticket-holders for the show, which costs $4.95 for adults, are able to buy wares directly from the booths, according to George Colouris, the show’s producer.
Standing in front of a green and gold Chinese dragon that reflects the show’s Chinese theme, Delamore watched workers unload trucks of exotic flowers flown in that morning from Hawaii, the Far East and Holland.
Many require special care, like the tropical plants that drink from flower heads as well as roots, and have to be dunked head-first in buckets of water. Cut flowers, which are arranged in Chinese ceramics and baskets, will keep for 15 to 20 days, Delamore said.
White and purple long-stemmed orchids from the Far East, spiky red Heliconia, and fine-leafed Chinese maples all “contribute to the general Chinese feeling . . . . It’s not completely authentic, but we did contact the Chinese consulate in San Francisco to get details on the flowers in China,” Delamore said.
The logistics of importing the flowers, shipping in trees from a nursery in Walnut, Calif., and arranging the flowers is not the hardest part, he added.
“The most difficult thing is that we have a crew of 50, with a four-day move-in, and we have to keep track of everybody,” he said.
Colouris agrees. “Each year this gets a little bigger, we hire more people, and it’s that much more exciting,” he said.
