We love to see how much our local community enjoys the giant pink flamingos that sit right outside our Nampa Garden Center! They’ve become a significant part of our space, and we want to celebrate the talented folks that came together and made this passion project happen through lots of hard work, exploding foam “disasters,” and generous help from others around us.

One instrumental person in this flamingo project is David Koga, whose connection with Franz Witte goes way back. David worked for Franz along with Phil Hull (Yes, Phil, the husband of our current President!) and made their start right in the State Street offices. Franz helped David and Phil launch The Land Group, a landscape architecture firm that is now well-established in the Treasure Valley.

David Koga has long been a treasured family friend of the Wittes and happens to be the talented artist behind the first hand-drawn renders and images of the flamingo statues. He reminisced about his contributions with the rest of the group, looking over all of the initial sketches and plans. He even let us know the nicknames he gave to each one.

“The big one was Pat, the leader. The second one was curious Georgina. The small one was Fred the Flamingo.”

We also reconnected with the folks from Paper Wings Design – Patrick Churchman and Nick Stoppello – and local artist Dan Beaudreau to celebrate and document their achievements in making the giant flamingo statues come to life.

Their story involves the retelling of a passionate build accomplished through endless templates, tests, exploding foam “disasters,” and ultimately – the perseverance of the small, mighty team that made it happen. They talked extensively about the process and ended the recourse by reassuring that they learned so much from the experience that it was simply worth it.

Nick said, “Truthfully, though, for Pat and I, we jokingly use the term “flamingo” as code word in conversation to always remember how to commit properly to what we can accomplish. Nowadays we look forward to making things bigger than life and the tremendous value of learning through the process. It means a lot to us. Don’t just do something anyone else can do.”

Dan Beaudreau was the painter that brought those bright flamingos to color. He worked hard to retain that “Franz Witte pink” the team had envisioned, and he worked long hours to make it happen.

“I painted pretty fast – I would get there and work all night until 12 or so. The Thursday or Friday before opening (Mother’s Day weekend, 2021) I put the final coats on, and they got installed right on time.”

Franz, Seneca, and Vicki shared some of their personal thoughts and experiences during the build as well. The whole group joined in laughter as they joked about getting a 100 ft tall flamingo for the McCall location, right off Hwy 55.

Or was it a joke? You never know with our team, we just might DO it.
“We didn’t tell anyone we were doing this,” said Seneca.