As anybody who has visited Florida can let you know — the temperatures keep fairly sizzling within the Sunshine State, particularly within the spring and summer time months. So Walt Disney World Resort’s (WDW) staff of horticulture specialists have fairly a process through the Epcot International Flower and Garden Festival — an occasion celebrating all issues that bloom and blossom, which runs from early March by means of early July.
Just what number of flowers and vegetation adorn the theme park through the competition? Epcot provides greater than 200,000 bedding vegetation to their gardens every year and produces 170 floating gardens to brighten Epcot’s World Celebration West Lake, every of which accommodates 50 four-inch annuals. Then there’s the “flower towers,” pillars of blooms designed so as to add vertical coloration to Epcot, every planted with 250 particular person vegetation.
About 100 topiaries will also be found all through the park, formed to appear like beloved Disney characters like Bambi, Elsa and Mickey Mouse himself.
Truman Anderson, who works in WDW horticulture providers, says the topiaries can take a number of years to construct.
“Depending on if it’s a fresh new topiary, it can take almost two years to get one ready by the time we work with our WDW imagineers and character artists to actually make sure we get the frame right and make little tweaks and changes,” Anderson tells Yahoo Life. “It’s an incredible process that the team at our tree farm (the nursery where WDW raises plants until they’re ready to be planted somewhere on the property) can spend years developing.”
There’s a 20-foot lengthy dragon topiary at this 12 months’s competition, together with a 14-foot tall Goofy that is fabricated from three separate items and takes a crane to put in. One may spend a complete day inside Epcot’s gates merely looking for every of the flowery creations.
But there’s extra floral enjoyable available on the competition, which lasts 125 days — making it the longest-running flower and backyard competition within the U.S. There’s additionally a scavenger hunt that includes Disney character Spike the Bee, the place households can seek for shows all around the park that listing vegetation by their scientific names, one thing Anderson and his staff should sustain with.
“We spend a lot of time researching and making sure what we have out there is always correct and always up to date,” he says. “The names for plants change every year — [taxonomists] can’t make up their minds. They’ll be like, ‘Oh never mind, now it’s in this family,’ so we always have to check that everything we put out is always up to date.”
And then there’s the climate. In Spike the Bee’s scavenger hunt alone, Anderson says there’s at all times an opportunity a plant will not make it by means of a wet or sizzling day and should quickly disappear from the map.
“Every sign is supposed to have a plant that matches and we’re supposed to have flowers like that in the bed, but occasionally something will happen,” Anderson explains. “The worst one is always the white daisy. Midsummer, keeping white Gerbera daisies alive is almost impossible in Florida, so we’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, well there used to be daisies.'”
Florida’s summer time downpours are additionally a problem. Anderson says many a flower mattress has wanted to be modified out unexpectedly because of injury from extra rainfall. Still, some weather-related put on and tear is anticipated and even deliberate for. “We actually go with the seasons,” he says. “We have three full rotations because of the length [of the festival].”
Anderson explains there is a “dedicated crew that will continually tweak [the display beds], so if something’s going out of season or something’s going back in season, they take care of that.” For instance, he says, “If you come here in March, the Miss Piggy and Kermit topiaries will always look like Miss Piggy and Kermit, but their flower beds will not look the same as if you came back in July.”
“Multiple visits are required so you can keep track of what we do,” he jokes.
And it isn’t simply vegetation that will probably be modified out at this 12 months’s competition. At the Farmer’s Feast out of doors kitchen, competition meals menus will change thrice over the course of the occasion.
“Right now we’re in our early bloom, which will be going on through early April,” Kevin Downing, a sous chef at WDW, says of the menu, which incorporates dishes like a goat cheese creamsicle pop and char-grilled bison ribeye. “Then we’ll transition to a springtime menu and then right around the end of May, we’ll transition one more time to our Summer Solstice menu and feature items that are really themed toward the season and what’s available during that time of year.”
“Flower and Garden is really about the best of what mother nature can give us as chefs to work with,” Downing tells Yahoo Life. “This festival is long: It starts at the beginning of March and really goes through almost three periods, so we wanted to play off that in our menu items.”
Menu gadgets additionally “play off” the competition’s concentrate on vegetation. In the Garden Graze — a stroll across the park the place festival-goers journey to totally different out of doors meals kiosks and acquire stamps for attempting plant-based menu gadgets like avocado toast, potato pancakes and grilled child greens — company redeem their stamped competition passport for a particular prize.
Other competition highlights embody an Encanto-themed backyard with an adjoining meals kiosk that serves up a wide range of arepas, nightly leisure from native and nationwide artists within the Garden Rocks Concert Series and festival-exclusive merchandise that includes rarely-seen characters like Figment and the Orange Bird.
Epcot’s International Flower and Garden Festival is included in Epcot park admission and runs by means of July 4, 2022.
Want way of life and wellness information delivered to your inbox? Sign up right here for Yahoo Life’s e-newsletter.
