The 200 festival volunteers had first chance at a dig on Sunday night taking time to fossick through the displays for bulbs they'd like to take home.

On Monday heads were rolling, as crews cut fresh blooms and bundled up bouquets for delivery to patients in hospitals and nursing homes across the capital.

Head gardener Andrew Forster said this year was his 19th Floriade but he hadn't tired of seeing how the bright flowers lit up people's lives.

While more than 100 staff worked on the massive manual bump out, Mr Forster made sure his eight gardening apprentices took time out for deliveries to feel the joy the special bouquets brought to others.

"A lot of the people we give them to aren't able to get out to Floriade because they can't get around so it's a great way of bringing Floriade to them," he said.

Bulbs, destined to grace public parks when they burst through the ground next season, have been transported from the site.

Bobcats zipped about scooping up irises, daffodils, ranunculus, blue bells and other plants to naturalise elsewhere.

"They're all things that will come up again next year," Mr Forster said. "We take some to Glebe Park, English Gardens at Yarralumla Nursery, to Weston and John Knight Park."

Tulips and plant waste is taken from the site and churned up to be transformed into recycled paper by non profit Paperworks Inc but everything else goes with the soil and is composted by Martins Fertilisers in Yass.

Crews have been thankful hot summer weather has remained at bay as they carry out the hard work removing and recycling it all.

Machines will level and prepare beds before turf is laid and the park is reopened for the summer.

Standing on a turned up heap of soil Mr Forster considered how the end of the annual floral show was always bittersweet.

"It is a bit like life and death," he said. "The really good thing about Floriade is you start from scratch. You plant the bulbs which grow, they flower and then there's this, the end of the full process."