Blooms and a barn at the Sonoma County Fair preview

The air was heavy and thick inside the Sonoma County Fair's Hall of Flowers Thursday night, with the perfume of tens of thousands of exotic flowers.

About 300 people - most armed with smartphone cameras - gawked at the elaborate floral displays showcased to the public for the first time Thursday night, as part of the fair's Hall of Flowers Preview Party.

This year's theme focuses on movies filmed around the county, with floral displays inspired by classics like “The Goonies,” “The Birds,” “Bottle Shock” and others.

The 2016 exhibit is dedicated to Greg Duncan, the show's creative director and designer for more than two decades. When introduced, though, in front of a crowd gathered in the courtyard, Duncan demurred, dedicating the show instead to his partner of 20 years, Kim Buscaino. She died of cancer in May.

It was a touching moment created by a man who has long helmed what has grown to be the largest flower show on the West Coast, since it began in 1952.

This year featured nine professional displays, in the 27,000-square-foot hall with just three taking home blue ribbons - a much smaller than usual number, Duncan said.

“There were very tough judges this year,” he said. “I thought they were pretty strict. ... In my opinion, two more of them really deserved blue ribbons, but I'm not a judge, and that's just how the chips fall sometimes.”

Michael Golas, of Santa Rosa's Michael Golas Landscape Design, took home Best in Show - his fourth in the 24 years he's competed - for his “Bottle Shock”-themed display featuring more than 5,000 blooms, harkening back to the 2008 comedy-drama about a Napa Valley chardonnay beating a French wine in a Paris blind taste test. Modeled after Monet's garden, the display also incorporated vines replicating a vineyard, a gazebo and splashing fountains.

Planning for the display began in February and took hundreds, “if not thousands,” of hours, Golas said. “I'm on top of the world tonight,” he said. “I am absolutely over the moon because everyone saw the effort, and it's absolutely huge.”

Thursday night was also the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new agricultural education center at the fairgrounds, named for Saralee McClelland Kunde and her husband Richard Kunde. Sonoma County's “first couple of agriculture” met while decorating the Hall of Flowers ahead of the Harvest Fair, so it's fitting the two events took place just an hour apart. Saralee died in January 2014 of cancer.

“I'm speechless, what else can I say?” Richard said after the ribbon cutting. “I feel like Saralee is looking down. She's the one that started the foundation. Her idea was to get the barn built, and now it is.”

The building cost about $3 million to build, and was entirely funded by community donations to the fair foundation.

About 150 people showed up for the ceremony. Among them were supervisors Shirlee Zane and James Gore.

“There's a new ag movement that's coming in,” Gore said. “There's the ag movement that's 150 years old in Sonoma County, but there's also this excitement. For me, this is like a new day. It's like pruning at the end of the season, and now we get a new center. We get kids coming into the fair. My son gets to come in here in overalls and jump on a toy John Deere and just have fun. And there are good people everywhere. This is what it's about.”

The 80th annual Sonoma County Fair opens Friday and runs through Aug. 7.