BENGALURU: Four lakh roses — red, white and orange — have gone into making the show-stealer at Lalbagh Flower Show this year. Standing 27-feet tall, nearly touching the dome of the Glass House, is a replica of Parliament. It is 40 feet wide and 50 feet high.
The horticulture department has spent Rs 25 lakh on this.
The model was made from flowers sourced from Hosur, KR Market and a few private farms around the city. “Building this was tough,” says SP Agarwal, who led the team from Sneelu Flowers. This flower-decorating agency is hired by the horticulture department for the replica. “One of the biggest challenges was that flowers are perishable,” he says.
He had submitted his interest in July and was given eight to nine days to prepare for it. Agarwal is an old hand at this and has been overseeing the replicas at the flower show for the past two years. Last year, there was the model of Bengaluru Palace (with two lakh Dutch roses) and year before that was Mysore Palace (made with three lakh white, red and yellow roses).
“This year, I started preparations four days ahead of the show,” says the decorator who had seen the legislative house in the capital city three years ago.
“We picked roses because they last longer,” he says. Flowers had to travel only for a few hours for this, but Agarwal says that they can last even for two to three days in room temperature if they are packed right.
Before the flowers arrived, the plan had to be set and the challenge was to get the proportions right. The real Parliament is 570 feet (170 m) in diameter and covers an area of six acres, and Agarwal’s model had to fit into the Glass House.
The base was laid with iron, cast into the oval shape. Then steel pillars were raised and a floral foam was used to make its skeleton (the designers have used wet foam that can keep the flowers hydrated for up to seven days). Then the flowers were simply stuck into the foam.
It was a labour-intensive process. Around 45 workers, supported by the staff of the horticulture department, worked for ten hours a day for eight days, to recreate the supreme legislative body.
“The process was hectic, but we pulled it off,” says Agarwal. Four models of security guards are stationed in the front of it to make it more realistic.
There is a misting system in place, to keep the temperature down by 2 to 3 degrees and it is watered morning and evening.
The Glass House too is kept cool with a new system of fogging — a concept taken from Israel in order to keep the flowers fresh. With this, 0.3mm water droplets are sprinkled around the dome.
Smaller models, which speak for a greener tomorrow, have been place around it — a windmill surrounded by a grass land, a farmhouse that runs on solar energy and a pond. Then there are the floral cascades, but what is quirky is a peacock made from orchids and capsicum!