Love of flowers will take Gahanna designer to 2022 Rose Parade
Her dogs are named Dahlia, Violet and Jasmine.
As a child, she once locked her mother in the basement so she could cut flowers in the yard without parental interference.
And she grew up to be a floral designer. So, of course, Jody Brown-spivey, 56, is looking forward to several days working on floats for the Rose Parade on Jan. 1 in Pasadena, California.
The upcoming New Year’s Day parade will be the 15th for Brown-spivey, owner of Expressions Floral Design Studio in Gahanna. The fact that Ohio State — knocked out of the college football playoff by a loss to Michigan — will play in the Rose Bowl on the same day only makes it better.
“Everybody thought I was nuts saying I didn’t care if the Buckeyes lost to Michigan,” Brown-spivey said.
Brown-spivey’s routine has been to fly out on Christmas Day (lighter crowds and cheaper airfare), get acclimated, gather supplies and then plunge into five days of work (including her birthday, Dec. 29) leading up to the parade.
For the 2022 parade, she will be executing designs created by Artistic En
tertainment Services for floats sponsored by China Airlines, Wetzel Pretzels and Reese’s candy
Volunteers will have preceded her, doing what’s known as “seeding,” which consists of applying organic materials (pumpkin seeds, oatmeal, sea weed, etc.) as a sort of background for the elaborate floral float displays.
If all goes according to plan, the result will be a picture-perfect spectacle of flowers in motion. Not that it always goes according to plan. Unseasonable warmth that wilts the flowers, rain that melts the glue holding features in place, untimely failures — Brown-spivey’s seen them all.
“There was a year when a float had three big spheres on it, and one came undone on the way to the parade. It was rolling down the road.”
Her love of all things floral goes back to about age 6, when she locked her mother in the basement so she could snip flowers in the yard.
“She could see my feet outside the window, and she knew exactly what I was doing.”
She studied floral design after high school and opened Expressions in the Stoneridge Plaza in 2003.
After last year’s parade cancellation because of the pandemic, she’s eager to reconnect with friends, compete for awards and maybe get a photo with a celebrity.
The days might stretch to 18 hours or more and the deadline pressure will be strong, but the results can bring a flower lover to tears. That was Brown-spivey’s reaction the first time she saw one of her floats in the parade.
“We had worked through the night, and it was exhausting and we had won an award for the float. It was a military float, my dad was veteran, a military band played, a stealth bomber flew over and I just bawled.”
Joe Blundo is a Dispatch columnist. joe.blundo@gmail.com @joeblundo