A total of ten City staff will be working through the night, starting at about midnight tonight and working till about 6:30 am to hang 256 baskets along the boulevards in Steinbach.
Joyce Purchase, the City’s Landscape Technician, explains, “We have three staff at the greenhouse taking down the baskets, three staff in trucks bringing the baskets from the greenhouse to the street, and four staff on a big truck that drives along the boulevards, hanging the baskets.”
The staff at the greenhouse organize the baskets into specific colours and the truck drivers are loaded with the appropriate colour for the appropriate boulevard. The truck drivers bring the baskets to the big truck where the baskets are transferred again, and then the baskets are carried to the end of a long ramp off the side of the truck and hung on a boulevard hanger.
Purchase jokes, “The truck then drives to the next pole and the process is repeated over and over and over and over and …”
The colours of the baskets will include purple, pink, salmon, and some with a mix of the three. There is also a new mix in some of the baskets this year with a variety of other plants besides the usual wave petunias.
Along with the 256 boulevard baskets, another 75 flower baskets are hung at various businesses and other city buildings like the Library, Cultural Arts Centrel, and Firehall. Those will be going up next Monday.
