Petal Pushers

It may be the only bucket-list activity that leaves you with crushed rice in your hair, glue on your fingers and discolored pumpkin seeds in your pockets.

But the volunteers who decorate the Rose Parade floats every December wouldn't have it any other way. In the weeks leading up to January 1, they work practically around-the-clock applying seeds, beans, rice, rose petals and other natural products to the elaborate, colorful floats that roll down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena every year along with marching bands and high-stepping horses.

Last December, my mom and I found out first-hand what it was like to be a part of the chaotically euphoric float decorating process. We worked beside Girl Scouts, grandmothers, high school students and retired couples. We chopped stems, hauled buckets of water and made sure that the lemonade roses didn't get mixed in with the wasabi ones.

This year, we returned to help in late November, when many of the floats are still in pieces and the pace is less frantic but the work is still plentiful.

Both experiences left us tired, happy and inspired by the hard work and camaraderie that marks the heroic final push to get the floats decorated and camera-ready by New Year's Day.

Volunteers have been a part of the Tournament of Roses since it began in 1890, when a local hunt club threw a big party to celebrate Southern California's sunny climate. There were chariot races, polo games and jousting, followed by a parade of horse carriages adorned in fresh flowers.

Today, six of the 39 floats in the Rose Parade rely solely on volunteers to design, build and decorate. Even the professional companies hired to build the other corporate-sponsored floats welcome volunteers of all ages and abilities in the final chaotic week before the parade.

All that's required is a signed waiver and a willingness to get messy.

When the fresh roses, carnations, marigolds and other blooms start showing up in the days after Christmas, it's all hands on deck, says Hanna Jungbauer, volunteer coordinator for the Sierra Madre Rose Float Association in Sierra Madre, a city adjacent to Pasadena.

"The energy changes. Everything amps up," she says. "Everyone wants to be here."

Besides a cadre of loyal locals, Sierra Madre attracts volunteers from as far away as Guam, Hawaii, Romania and Canada, Jungbauer says. People sign up to help through the association's website or just walk up to the huge barn on the town's eastern edge that houses the float, and the tools and materials used to build it.

"They'll show up and say, 'We've always wanted to touch a float. What can we do to help?' " she says.

Jacque Page, a clinical psychologist from Memphis, Tennessee, has been helping decorate Sierra Madre's float since 2011.

"I grew up watching the parade and I thought that it would be so neat to be a part of it," she says. Over the years, Page has glued seaweed on eyeballs, learned how to space out carnations perfectly so the petals don't overlap, and placed hundreds of roses in individual water-filled vials. She once got so much floral glue and black nigella in her hair that she had to use WD-40 to remove it all.

That didn't stop Page from coming back every year. She loves every part of it, but it's the final hours before New Year's Eve when everyone steps up their game and "things really start to sing," she says.

While crafty skills can be helpful, they are not required to decorate floats. In November and early December, before the fresh flowers show up, volunteers are put to work painting boards, hand-crushing dried marigolds and tweezing random black onion seeds out of shallow bowls of white rice.

First-time volunteers typically start by picking leaves off branches or sorting seeds, says Pam Wiedenbeck, vice president of float development for the La Cañada-Flintridge Tournament of Roses Association in another nearby Southern California community.

If volunteers seem unsure or overwhelmed by a decorating task, Wiedenbeck will find them another job. "People find their niche," she says. "If they seem bored, I put them to work in the kitchen or sweeping."

Rose petaling is the pinnacle volunteer task, she adds. "It requires not only gluing each petal on to the float but creating an effect."

The town of La Cañada-Flintridge welcomes anybody who wants to help out, Wiedenbeck says. Volunteers start working on the float in the parking lot of the local water utility, then move to a nearby freeway underpass for the final days of decorating. That's when as many as 1,300 volunteers show up to help in morning, afternoon and evening shifts.

"Even if it's just a one-time thing and it doesn't stick, it's OK," she says. "You can say you were a part of this and you now know something 99% of the world doesn't know."

On a recent Saturday, my mother and I joined dozens of other volunteers at long tables in a pavilion near the Rose Bowl. Koi as big as motorcycles hovered over us, and giant pandas and sea monsters lurked around the corner awaiting direction. There was an excited sense of purpose in the air as we started out removing discolored pumpkin seeds from cardboard flats (they would eventually be placed on the white bases of several floats).

After about an hour, we moved on to applying black beans one at a time to rectangle outlines at the base of the grand finale float that carries the headlining performer (this year, it's Debbie Gibson). Float captains checked periodically to make sure each bean faced the same way and aligned perfectly.

Nearby, a table of volunteers glued red lentils onto large starfish destined for a tropical-themed float with a sea life base, while others dusted smoked paprika in the crevices of giant corn cobs to create a shadow effect.

Most of the people we met were returning volunteers who could not imagine the holiday season without the Rose Parade.

The best part of the job, says Peggy Lui, a longtime volunteer from Pasadena, is seeing the floats you worked on come to life on New Year's Day and pointing out the parts you worked on to your friends and family.

"It's like magic," she says.

Laura Randall is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. Her web site is AuthorLauraRandall.com. Read More