Westside : MORE BLOOMIN’ ADS

Companies routinely use billboards, balloons and banners to hawk their products. But freeway embankments?

Caltrans is offering businesses the opportunity to display their logos--in the form of living plants and flowers--along such well-traveled Westside thoroughfares as the Santa Monica and the San Diego freeways.

Recent state legislation created the “Living Logo” program, in which businesses agree to maintain eight or more acres of landscaping alongside a freeway in exchange for permission to create the outdoor advertising. The company may maintain a logo of plants no larger than 75 by 40 feet.

Selected companies must meet strict standards of irrigation, maintenance and trash pickup. But all that foliage could make for a, well, lively marketing campaign.

“Both the 10 and 405 freeways each have over 300,000 vehicles a day,” said Russell Snyder, a Caltrans spokesman. “Businesses will be able to get a lot of bang for the buck. . . .”