Last month we were in Orlando for an APLD Leadership conference. We stayed on a couple of days to catch a bit of the Disney experience. Our favorite part of our time was viewing the topiaries at Epcot. We happened to be there during the “2018 Epcot® International Flower & Garden Festival” as luck would have it!

I became fascinated with the Disney characters topiaries several years ago when I was at the APLD International Design conference in Orlando.

We took a behind the scenes tour of the growing facilities and they showed us how they construct and plant the large topiaries.

We could not take pictures, but I do remember how they shaped and molded each character using chicken wire and filled it with moss.

They also had micro tubing all through it to water the plants. They use a variety of materials to create the colors of each character.

I was surprised to see them using Ajuga on a few of them. It is truly amazing how beautiful they are!

This is the 25th annual Flower and Garden Festival and the park was bursting with flowers. It is on until May 28, 2018!

Epcot is broken up into different countries and we learned that the restaurants in each area are staffed with young people from that country. It is a year-long program and they live in dorms and later can apply to other Disney destinations for work. We had an excellent pub lunch with a very charming server from York.

We also went to the Magic Kingdom. Unfortunately, we were also there during part of the countries spring break. It was very full of people of all ages. I have never seen so many strollers in one place. We did catch a few rides, but we both said we would not return unless we had a child to enjoy it with!

Happy Gardening!