Mardi Gras Parade By Tina Bemis MCH

Thanks for taking the time to enjoy our display.  We thought you might be interested in what goes on behind-the-scenes at Bemis Farms Nursery in putting together a flower show landscape, so here’s a little bit of history and background.

Every few years we simply can’t resist the urge to create a display, even knowing what a big undertaking it is. We are honored to be asked to help judge the Worcester and Boston shows, but there is nothing like the thrill of creating your own display.  You see, our exhibiting roots go back 50 years to 1955, when Richard “Dick” Bemis first put a display in Horticultural Hall, back when the flower show was run by the Worcester County Horticultural Society. Dick’s son, Ed, remembers helping out as a young boy over 40 years ago! Back then, there were no heated greenhouses on the farm, so all of the plant material was forced in the family living room using heat from the wood stove.

Nowadays, however, preparations begin in October, when plants are chosen and moved to a special greenhouse instead of being “mulched in” outside for the winter. This greenhouse is kept around 35 degrees so plants stay dormant but accessible. In early January they are moved to the “warm” greenhouse, with cozy 65 degree nights, and tropical 80 degree days, where they are forced, cajoled, coaxed, and otherwise manipulated (or begged!) to come into bloom “before their time.” The plants are often moved several times between warm greenhouse and cool greenhouse, depending on the weather.

By January we are finalizing the design and concept of our garden, which must follow the theme of the show.  This year’s theme is “Festival of Color” so we chose Mardi Gras, complete with a parade! We had carefully chosen flowers in the traditional colors of Mardi Gras, green, purple, and gold. Mardi Gras gold is metallic, and since no plant blooms metallic, we encountered our first dilemma: Should we use gold or yellow? Dozens of Mardi Gras websites use orange colors to depict gold, so that’s what we chose when we picked our azaleas and arranged to borrow a shiny, new tractor for an imaginary “float.” The plants were coming along fine, when the Mardi Gras masks arrived in green, purple, and YELLOW! After much group discussion, we decided to switch to a yellow tractor instead, and to quickly force some yellow daffodils and tulips. But we also decided to keep the orange plants too.  Horticultural gold, we convinced ourselves, was a mixture of both yellow and orange.

But how do both of those colors now combine with our purple plants, especially when the purple PJM rhododendrons were starting to look kind of pink, and the other purples were ranging in color from sky blue to a true, deep violet? Another conference ensued, and we decided that a Mardi Gras parade was a riot of colors, and as long as we stayed away from red, the colors could work together.

We bravely decide to paint the kick-board retaining walls purple for whimsy (and cowardly crossed our fingers that they wouldn’t look tacky) and got to play around with a few, fun, finishing touches.  I spent more time than I care to admit online looking for a crown for my king.  The one I really wanted was only in Canada, a purple velvet “regal crown” but they could not promise I would have it in time, due to border issues.  So I got a gold royal crown and scepter.  And did you notice the living wreath designed to look like an authentic King Cake?  Or that the garden was located on Bourbon street?

Next comes the hard work when all of the plants are transported warmly to Worcester from Spencer, along with hundreds of pallets to add height, as well as yards of mulch to hide all the mechanics. Then we have just 3 short days to create our garden on a slab of concrete. We arranged to capture the process on videotape to be shown on the television show “Bloomin’ with the Bemis’ on several local cable access channels in Worcester County. If you don’t get Bloomin’ in your town, ask your local cable access station to get it, or you can order a copy of the DVD or VHS from us.