Behind the Scenes at the Taipei Flora Expo

Red-orange and golden-yellow marigolds shimmer in the sunshine. Deep-purple, light-purple, and pastel-white Chinese pinks bow gracefully, while blue, white, and purple violets and red, white, and yellow strawflowers (aka everlastings) stand out from the crowd with their elegance, swaying in the breeze. In January, the Flora Expo bursts with color, competing to attract the attention of visitors.

In just 40 days from the opening of the Taipei Flora Expo on November 6, 2010, there were more than 2 million visits. According to a survey by the event's headquarters, over 80% of visitors expressed satisfaction with the fair.

The high levels of support and satisfaction expressed by visitors are due only in part to the much-bally-hooed architectural and technological sights, as even more people have found their hearts captivated by the expanses of enchanting efflorescence.

Since flowers will collapse under the slightest pressure or jostling, they need special frames and packaging to ensure safe delivery. The photos show flowers brought north by Foreport Enterprises from Cingjing Farm in Nantou.

Perhaps you didn't know, but there have been a number of creative innovations introduced in the Taipei Flora Expo.

The "Green Wall" at the entrance to the Yuan-shan Park Area is the biggest freestanding plant wall in all of Taiwan. This six-meter-high and 50-meter-long palisade, jam-packed with perennial shrubs like the rose-stripe star, the green emerald philodendron, and snowrose (aka "tree of a thousand stars"), is a veritable gallery of greenery.

The designer, Hsia Han-ming of Han Ming Landscape Architects Associates, reveals that because of differences in exposure to sunlight, the blossoms on the rear side of the wall, which faces south, are even more resplendent than those on the forward side, but few visitors realize this, and limit themselves to taking pictures beside the Flora Expo logo on the front face.

Moreover, from time to time in the display areas you will see flowers that are normally cultivated in small pots planted right in the ground in broad areas.

In December, the Yuan-shan display zone was inundated by poinsettia. They included the Pepride ones seen most commonly in the marketplace, which come in several color combinations including red-green, yellow-white, yellow-red, and white-red. But you could also see the purple-yellow Cortez-Burgundy, as well as a number of other varieties rarely seen in Taiwan, including the Sonora series, Nobelstar, Splendor, and Eckespoint Freedom, taking their places on the parade ground for review by local citizens. In January came the changeover to narcissus, also presented in the rarely seen state of being grown right in the ground over large areas. Hsia Han-ming claims that this is the first time anywhere in the world that narcissus have been planted in precisely this way!

Another feature of the Flora Expo that has not been often used before is the "sea" of hundreds of thousands of flowers.

There are several scenes in the Taipei Flora Expo that impress with their sheer scale, such as the "Flora Rainbows" formed using 210,000 potted plants in seven hues, located in the stands of the Zhong-shan soccer stadium; the "Flower Landscape" that covers a full hectare of the Yuan-shan Park Area; and the vast "Sea of Flowers" in the Da-jia Riverside Park. You could easily think that you somehow got beamed into the bloom-filled fields of late summer and early autumn flowers for which Hokkaido in northern Japan is so renowned.

The Taipei International Flora Expo has brought color into the center of the capital city. Floweras on display thus far have included the pouch flower (1), Royal Trinity #5 (2), marigold (3), zinnia (4), blue-eyed daisy (5), and Marguerite (6).

The Taipei International Flora Expo, or TIFE, certainly has a rich Taiwanese feel, but you may not know that it is the first international-level flower show in history to be held in the heart of a metropolis. This is the aspect that has earned the greatest praise from Dr. Doeke Faber, chairman of the International Association of Horticultural Producers (widely known under its French acronym, AIPH), who believes that the Taipei show has created a model for the next decade of flora expos. And yet Taipei has been able to rewrite history exactly because of the difficulties in finding an ideal place for the event.

Monica Kuo, dean of the College of Environmental Planning and Design at Chinese Culture University and a consultant to the Taipei Flora Expo, has said that Taipei has "less than ideal innate conditions" for such an event. For any horticultural event in this city, the ideal place, she says, would be the Guandu Plain (in the northernmost outskirts), which is still largely agricultural, and is suitable for a show built around the theme of wetlands and paddy fields. But because it was impossible to solve problems related to land acquisition, and given that time was a limiting factor, the best remaining option was to utilize the state-owned land and facilities around the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the Zhong-shan soccer stadium, Xin-sheng Park, and Da-jia Riverside Park.

"The Taipei Flora Expo has not been constructed out of nothing on a big piece of empty rural or suburban land. Instead, it has been created within parks that are in turn surrounded by urban areas. Most of the parks have a number of long-standing trees and plants, so the locations have a very 'green' feel already," says Kuo, and it is this juxtaposition of park greenery with urban surroundings that lends a unique character to the TIFE. Thus, although a developed urban area may not be thought of as an ideal location for a flower show, the "peaceful co-existence" of architecture and environment in Taipei has shown the way to an alternative model for such an event.

Besides finding some tranquil space amidst urban noise, another problem was to find the best possible timing for the event. Some say that the best time to go to the Flora Expo will be right before it ends, because March and April are the season when flowers flourish in Taipei.

It was decided to open the TIFE in November and close it in April in order to avoid typhoons, which occur in summer and autumn. Chen Hsiung-wen, commissioner of the Taipei City Department of Economic Development and executive director of the TIFE, explains that the damage caused by winter cold is less than that from summer typhoons. He points out that the expo is expected to go through 3300 varieties and 30 million plants in its half-year run. The Flower Landscape, Sea of Flowers, and Flora Rainbows require 50-60,000 plants for each changeover.

Of all the display areas, Dajia Riverside Park poses the highest risk of damage to flowers because it is flat and open, offering no shelter from the elements. When Supertyphoon Fanapi hit before the expo opened, even though the park was not flooded the heavy rains caused losses of 30-40% in the display area. Moreover, because summer in Taiwan is so hot, blossoms are of poor quality, and supplies of flowers would have been inadequate.

To prepare for their coming-out party in January, Foreport planted and froze 50 varieties of tulip bulbs three full months in advance. The right photo shows the "Hamilton" fringed tulip.

Naturally the first problem was to get all the plants and flowers in place for the opening. Transport proved to be an especially big headache for the fruit trees.

The fruit trees in the Yuan-shan Park Area were provided by the Council of Agriculture, which scoured agricultural experimental stations across Taiwan to find them. Many were cultivated in their main production regions until heavy with fruit, then were transplanted into the expo area, but many of these suffered damage during their long-distance transport. The sugar--apple trees proved especially difficult to care for. The first sample was shaken so much on its journey from Ping-tung to Tai-pei (about eight hours by road) that all the fruit fell off, so the experimental station had to scramble to send a replacement. It has also been found that transplanted fruit trees often adapt poorly to the new soil and water, losing a lot of their luster.

The flower suppliers have also found supplying flowers for a fixed deadline to be quite demanding, but still are doing their part. "Taiwan will do this only once in a century, and who knows when we will have the chance to hold an event like this again," says Steven Chao of the Kao-hsiung Flower Company. Unlike the things on display at other world fairs, it is living plants that are exhibited at a flower show, and the display period is very long at half a year, requiring enormous investment of manpower, materials, and time. Most horticulture companies are happy just to participate, without giving themselves the luxury of getting windfall profits.

Kao-hsiung's flower growing region is far from Taipei, and there are significant differences in climate between the two locales, but they still did everything they could to provide some of the cut flowers for the Expo Dome, such as the large quantities of high-quality flamingo lilies from Kao-hsiung's Nei-men Township, as well as lilies, roses, prairie gentian, and more-an estimated total of more than 10,000 cut flowers. It is expected that by the end of the event Kao-hsiung will have also provided over 10,000 potted plants, including ornamentals like the Chinese evergreen, devil's ivy, and philo-den-dron, and flowering plants like orchids, poinsettia, and flamingo lily.

The Taipei International Flora Expo has brought color into the center of the capital city. Floweras on display thus far have included the pouch flower (1), Royal Trinity #5 (2), marigold (3), zinnia (4), blue-eyed daisy (5), and Marguerite (6).

The Flora Expo is divided into six time periods, with the flowers being rotated on the basis of designers' plans. In principle each stage lasts one month, though minor adjustments may be made depending upon the weather.

Changing over to new flowers is a major undertaking. In early December, the Flower Landscape in the Yuan-shan display area went through its second transformation. To avoid having the work clash with times when the area is open to the public, replacing old plants with new began at 11:00 each night, with nearly 100 staff putting new plants into place throughout the night.

Hsia Han-ming notes that it takes seven to 10 days to do a complete changeover of the Yuan-shan display area, but unless you come to the expo every day, it is unlikely you will notice that the Flower Landscape or the Flora Rainbows have been stealthily having their brilliant colors refreshed.

The stands at the Zhongshan soccer stadium in the Yuanshan Park Area have been turned into "Flora Rainbows."This is one of the most popular places in the whole TIFE to take commemorative photos.

While the time and expense of replacing displays is certainly tough, it is not, in the opinion of Chu Chien-young, a professor in the Department of Horticulture at National Chung Hsing University, the biggest challenge. The most unnerving thing, he says, is the unpredictability of living things.

Given that bushes and flowers are living things, you can't just make an arbitrary production schedule, as there are so many variables involved.

Take for example the new varieties on display in the Expo Dome and the Pavilion of the Future: one is a new type of "flaming katy" (Ka-lan-choe bloss-feld-iana)-which includes genetic material from the lance-leaf groundberry from Eluanbi in southern Taiwan, which blossoms early and has excellent branching-and the other of the Chinese hibiscus (Hi-bis-cus rosa-sin-en-sis). For the latter, Chu Chien-young began propagating the flowers in April of 2010. Because each bloom of the Chinese hibiscus survives for only a single day, in order to ensure that there would be blooms visible every day, Chu had to make meticulous calculations. Given that a single branch can produce a flower every three days, you must have at least nine branches to get flowers each day, and it would take 30 branches per pot to keep flowers blossoming each day for the whole two-week display period.

There is beauty in numbers. Seen from a distance, the Xinsheng Park Area is a carpet of color.

If the planners have to be this meticulous for flowers sheltered in pavilions, imagine the uncertainties for those planted outside, where weather can make the difference between life and death.

For the Yuan-shan Park and Da-jia Riverside Park areas, which use huge volumes of flora, a contract system has been adopted. Horticultural producers accept commissions from designers and architects to cultivate and deliver plants on a schedule. But because the weather can't be controlled, no one can guarantee that flowers will blossom on a specific date.

Lu Shi-hao, owner of the Da-yuan Flower Farm, grows plants on 2.3 hectares of land in Da-yuan Township, Tao-yuan County. He began planting a wide variety of ornamentals and flowers-including "the great chrysanthemum," whose flower is bigger than a human face-three months before they were scheduled to go on display. He has been contracted to deliver a million plants of more than 20 varieties for the Flower Base under Trees, another site in the Xin-sheng Park Area.

Lu, who has been growing plants for nearly 20 years, relates that the TIFE insists that all flowers used be in full bloom, but in outdoor cultivation of flowers the timing of blossoming is the most difficult thing to control. This has been especially the case in recent years, because the weather has been irregular and you never know when unseasonal weather will come and go. For the trial opening of the expo, it was very hot in September but turned quite chilly in October, and there were two or three weeks of almost uninterrupted rain. Some of the flowers simply stopped growing while some died prematurely, and the ones he delivered in December were all quite small. He is even more anxious about January, when temperatures below 10°C are ex-pec-ted, which will put the lives of all the plants at the expo in danger.

It is a problem if the flowers don't blossom at all, but it is also a problem if they blossom too early. The China aster at the Yuan-shan display area had organizers wringing their hands because the flowers "didn't follow their cue and came in too early."

The China aster comes from the Chinese mainland, and prefers warm temperatures. It blossoms in late summer or early autumn. Because the grower in this case lacked sufficient experience, they had reached full bloom well before the opening of the expo, and were only around to be admired for the first days after the formal opening, after which they had to leave the stage with unseemly haste. As a result few people had the good fortune to be able to see them.

Hsia Han-ming points out that most floricultural producers in Taiwan are small-scale farmers. When there is sudden demand for huge numbers of flowers, the work of cultivating the seedlings has to be divided up. The problem is that using different growers means different regional climates and soils, different growing methods, different quality of results some flowers arrive already in full bloom, others with unopened buds. As a result, designers have to revise their plans constantly, and new problems crop up every day.

The outdoor displays of "seas" or "walls" of flowers require huge numbers of plants, making replacement and maintenance an onerous task.

On the other hand, a lot of the design and architecture firms who won contracts for the expo actually had no background at all with floral gardens. Some design concepts were literally "unnatural," and made cultivation and survival of the plants much more difficult.

For example, Chu Chien-young says that in mid-November he got a call from a contractor asking for poinsettias to be planted outdoors under lights. "The guy had no idea that poinsettias are exclus-ively indoor potted plants," says Chu. Poinsettias wilt under the slightest adverse weather, and if put under lights they will react as if exposed to sunlight for long periods, with the red leaves turning green, and the combination of green and red creating black, making them look dirty.

Then there's the case of water convolvulus, reported on quite extensively in the media for a while, which are in fact quite difficult to maintain.

Chu Chien-young says that water convolvulus "catch cold" during the first cold spell that comes along, the leaves turn brown, and they have to be wrapped in plastic bags to keep them warm. This is true even when they are grown in the warmer climes of Taichung in the center of Taiwan, so imagine how they react when exposed to the rainy and chilly weather of Taipei in the north! "If there is even one rainstorm or a cold wind, they are doomed, and there is no choice but to replace them."

Beside climatic uncertainties, designers also create problems for growers because they don't understand the character of flowers, and think only of novelty and variation.

Lu Shi-hao was almost undone by the "garden ver-bena." The designer originally asked him to deliver the flowers for the trial period of opening to the public in September. But when he tried planting them in August, they just couldn't survive. To pacify the angry but ignorant designer, Lu had to get the TIFE Technical Assistance Team to come forward and explain that it wasn't his fault, in order for him to avoid being fined under his contract.

Lu says that some designers selected flowers just by looking at catalogues on the Internet, but most of their choices are not the kinds of flowers you can use for just any purpose. Some have fallen out of favor and are no longer in production, while others are produced in such small numbers that it would have been impossible to procure enough bulbs for planting. "What the flower seas are all about is blocks of color. Most visitors can't tell the difference between one kind of flower and another, much less between one subspecies and another, so there is no point in haggling over details like that!"

Then there are those flowers which look lovely by themselves, but make a mess of things if you are trying to get the sea-of-flowers effect. For instance, he says, look at the wishbone flowers planted in the first period in the Yuan-shan Park Area: "The wishbone flower is blue with white bordering, so they don't really look blue, yet they are not white either, which means they don't have much impact at all in the sea of flowers arrangement."

Since flowers will collapse under the slightest pressure or jostling, they need special frames and packaging to ensure safe delivery. The photos show flowers brought north by Foreport Enterprises from Cingjing Farm in Nantou.

Although this was Taiwan's first time ever holding such an event, and no one had any real experience, the expectations were clear: "Failure is unthinkable!" The organizers were most worried that there wouldn't be flowers to exhibit, so the Council of Agriculture (COA) gathered together a dozen or so experts in plant diseases, pests, and soil analysis and organized the "2010 Taipei International Flora Expo Technical Assistance Team for Contract Growers," focused on troubleshooting for flower growers who had been awarded contracts. Ting Ie, an assistant researcher at the Floriculture Research Center of the COA, was assigned the job of contact person for the team.

Ting points out that there is a big gap between what some designers understand and reality. "Climatic conditions are different, so it is not like every flower you happen to see in the Taipei Flower Market can be cultivated outdoors for a month in northern Taiwan."

In addition, many of the flowers selected for the expo are rare or novel varieties. "Even if you are lucky enough to keep them alive, they have a low germination rate," states Ting. Some flower growers lack understanding of the characteristics of novel flora, and are also unfamiliar with the diseases they may suffer from. For example, if scarlet sage (which comes in white and yellow varieties in addition to the common red) is affected by blossom blight, the blooms come out not at all the way the growers expect. These plants may even be infected by fusarium fungus, creating spotting on the petals or causing the petals to fall off, and the only thing growers can do is throw the whole lot away.

The Taipei International Flora Expo has brought color into the center of the capital city. Floweras on display thus far have included the pouch flower (1), Royal Trinity #5 (2), marigold (3), zinnia (4), blue-eyed daisy (5), and Marguerite (6).

The technical barriers to entry for bulb flowers are even higher. Foreport En-ter-prises, which specializes in imported seedlings and bulbs, has had the heavy responsibility of cultivating many varieties of bulb flowers for the Flora Expo, including lilies, tulips, hyacinths, and larkspur.

Foreport unveiled its lily field, with flowers cultivated from bulbs imported from the Netherlands, in mid-November, unleashing on the Xin-sheng Park Area the astonishing beauty of 23 kinds of lilies of various colors, including pink, yellow, red, orange-red, orange-yellow, and more. Especially noteworthy were the varieties known as "Shocking" (yellow outside, red at the center), "Miss Lucy" (with pink whorled petals), and the adorable pink "Souvenir," all of which are very rare in the domestic marketplace.

However, as Foreport general manager Julia Wu-Chiang says with regret, because the expo organizers did little promotion of their display, visitors were unaware of how special it was, and the lilies blossomed and emitted their lovely fragrance with little fanfare, coming on to the stage virtually unnoticed and exiting the same way.

In January, 50 varieties of tulips in a dazzling array of colors and shapes are on view in the Yuan-shan Park Area. They include many types which have never been available in the market in Taiwan before, such as the whorled-petal yellow "Monte Carlo," the lily-shaped "Calibra," and the red and fringed "Red Wing," so this is a rare opportunity to see them all gathered in one place.

For this exhibit, Foreport's farm in Puli, Nan-tou County, had all the bulbs planted and frozen by the end of September. Julia Wu-Chiang tells us that if bulbs are frozen first, and then put in soil later, the roots will be very fragile, so it is necessary to put the bulbs into a medium before chilling them to preserve the integrity of the roots.

Each and every variety of tulip has its own characteristics, so it is quite problematic to get them all to blossom at the same time. "Of course I'm anxious, but we are doing everything we can to make it happen," says Wu-Chiang.

Flowers are living things, with their own growth processes. You can't make them hurry up or slow down just to fit an arbitrary schedule.

The Taipei International Flora Expo has received an enthusiastic response from the public, but while the uninformed are impressed merely by the crowds and grandiosity of the event, insiders look to see how things have been done, and experts do not hesitate to say that some flaws exist that mar the overall attractiveness of the event.

As landscape expert Monica Kuo avers, the expo could have been done even better if more attention had been given to detail. She notes that a flower show not only puts many flowers on display, it also has to have an element of the artistic that can move people. Speaking overall, the four display areas lack an overarching interface. More specifically, the color planning has not been done well-it is too direct, too flashy, not subtle enough, and lacking transitional gradations. She also says that many plants have been used inappropriately, revealing- that the people involved don't really understand what they are doing. For example, those plants on the Green Wall that grow faster are covering up the ones that grow slower, and haven't been trimmed properly, causing the patterning of the branches and leaves to become sloppy.

In the opinion of horticulture professor Chu Chien-young, the flowers are supposed to have had the leading role in the expo, but have constantly been upstaged, becoming mere supporting players. "A flower show should be for introducing Taiwan's flora culture to the world, but instead it has become a platform for marketing Taiwan's high technology!"

With four months of the expo still to go, including the Chinese New Year holiday when huge crowds may come, the organizers are by no means resting on their laurels.

Taipei City Department of Economic Development commissioner Chen Hsiung-wen notes that it will be a big challenge keeping this six-month-long event at the tempo thus far achieved. "Besides having activities that fit in with holidays like Christmas, New Year's Day, and the lunar new year, we will also continually offer new things to talk about."

With attendance far higher than anticipated, keeping service quality high will be another big test for the organizers.

Chen Hsiung-wen anticipates that there could be as many as 150,000 visits per day over the Chinese New Year holiday, so many services and facilities will have to be correspondingly adjusted. For example, the expo's dining areas can only hold 4000 people at any given time, and there have been complaints from people who have not been able to find seats, while designers complain when new tables and chairs are put up willy-nilly all over the place. It's a dilemma.

Basic map of the four park areas

"If you want to attend the expo, the earlier the better." Chen, pointing to the fact that the increase in attendance figures shows no signs of a letup, says that people who put off their visits to the future hoping that crowds will be smaller are likely to be disappointed.

For her part, Hsia Han-ming would like to refocus the public's attention. "The buildings will still be there in the future, but the flowers won't!"

"A real flora expo is not just a big extravaganza, like a fireworks display-the real spirit of a flower show is to connect to people's lives," says Monica Kuo. Many households in the Netherlands put out moth orchids, but while Taiwan is the world leader in the cultivation of moth orchids, the domestic public uses very few of these flowers.

With the experience of this international-level flora exposition under our belts, if we can cultivate more of a taste for horticulture among the public, so that people buy flowers, plant flowers, and make flowers part of their daily lives, "the power of beauty" will penetrate into the public mind, and we will see it flourish everywhere!

The Taipei International Flora Expo is being held with approval from the International Association of Horticultural Producers, known widely by their French acronym of AIPH.

Taiwan is the seventh country in Asia to hold such an expo. The AIPH grades events as being on one of four different levels, depending upon the length of the show, the frequency, and whether international producers are invited to participate. The TIFE falls under the highest level, which indicates the longest duration and a major AIPH event such as is only held once in a year.

Chen Hsiung-wen, commissioner of the Department of Economic Development of the Taipei City Government and concurrently the executive director for the Taipei Expo, lists the following as major characteristics of the TIFE:

1. Everything has been Made in Taiwan, from the planning, design, and bidding, to the project work, layout and operations. The fact that the whole expo has been made in Taiwan not only demonstrates Taiwan's "hardware" capabilities in terms of construction, it also gives the world a chance to see Taiwan's "soft power" in terms of cultural creativity.

2. The event is being held in a dense urban area. In the past, most flora shows were held by their host countries in less developed suburban areas, but Taipei selected an area that has long been developed, in hopes of making the TIFE also pay off in terms of urban renewal. It is also innovative that the exhibition area includes the banks of the Keelung River.

3. The TIFE is the first AIPH-approved expo to incorporate high technology. High-tech information technology has been used to bring out the floral theme. The AIPH chairman has even said that this will be a model for the next decade.

4. The TIFE's pavilions are considered Class 1, and ones such as the three pavilions in the Xinsheng Park Area, the Expo Hall, and the Pavilion of the Aroma of Flowers can continue to be used in the future.

5. There are no security fences around the venues, as the organizers trust citizens to govern their own behavior. There has been little damage to flowers or facilities so far, which leads Chen Hsiung-wen to conclude with confidence: "People in Taiwan are very trustworthy!"

The Taipei International Flora Expo has brought color into the center of the capital city. Floweras on display thus far have included the pouch flower (1), Royal Trinity #5 (2), marigold (3), zinnia (4), blue-eyed daisy (5), and Marguerite (6).

Flowers are living things, with their own growth processes. You can't make them hurry up or slow down just to fit an arbitrary schedule.

The Taipei International Flora Expo has brought color into the center of the capital city. Floweras on display thus far have included the pouch flower (1), Royal Trinity #5 (2), marigold (3), zinnia (4), blue-eyed daisy (5), and Marguerite (6).

The Green Wall at the entrance to the Yuanshan Park Area is the largest free-standing plant wall in all of Taiwan.

To prepare for their coming-out party in January, Foreport planted and froze 50 varieties of tulip bulbs three full months in advance. The right photo shows the "Hamilton" fringed tulip.

Since flowers will collapse under the slightest pressure or jostling, they need special frames and packaging to ensure safe delivery. The photos show flowers brought north by Foreport Enterprises from Cingjing Farm in Nantou.

Flowers, like all great beauties, inevitably fade and wither, but butterflies find them nonetheless irresistible. The Taipei Flower Expo has taken horticulture in Taiwan to a new level.

The Taipei International Flora Expo has brought color into the center of the capital city. Floweras on display thus far have included the pouch flower (1), Royal Trinity #5 (2), marigold (3), zinnia (4), blue-eyed daisy (5), and Marguerite (6).

Flowers are living things, with their own growth processes. You can't make them hurry up or slow down just to fit an arbitrary schedule.

Floral tunnels connect the different park areas. This photo showing the pathway connecting the Fine Arts and Xinsheng zones allows you to appreciate the beauty of sunlight filtered through foliage.

 

Basic map of the four park areas