I don’t have a green thumb. I can’t grow a thing. Flowers last for a few days in my house. I generally say don’t even bother buying them because I feel they get wasted. I can probably name less than a dozen types of flowers– and by types I mean the basics: roses, tulips, lilies. I just have never grown an interest in growing anything. So, it’s hard to believe it when I say the thing I miss most about Epcot is the Flower & Garden Festival.
I’m actually really sad that I’m not seeing all the topiaries and landscaping sprawled throughout the park this year. We go back to Disney in October and nothing will be in bloom. It’s hard to imagine seeing the park without these fine structures. The sculpting of the characters actually blew me away. They are such amazingly intricate designs. We’ve taken pictures with the Walt & Mickey statute at Magic Kingdom and with Rafiki a hundred times during our stay at Art of Animation, but there is something different about posing with a topiary. Maybe it feels move lively since it is in fact living. Who really knows? They’re just plain beautiful.
One of the most commonly displayed pictures of the floral artwork is in the area near the monorail. You can see in the background of this picture the flowers in bright patterns and a few Mickey head designs too!
My personal favorite character topiary is Mater! He’s in a bed of flowers and surrounded by junkyard tires! Perfect for Mater.
Not far behind Mater at the top of the favorite list is the Tick Tock Croc and Captain Hook. On the day that we stumbled past them the kids conveniently had convinced us to buy these plastic hooks. They almost had too much fun with Hook and their hooks. Peter Pan was also flying high on the building behind Croc, but I seem to be missing the picture of him.
Belle and friends were located in France. The detail is just stunning to me. Beast’s face. Cogsworth clock hands-mustache. The eyes on all of them! Piercing. Even looking back at these pictures from two years ago it still blows me away!
There are classics like Buzz Lightyear (with a Photopass photographer when we were there) and Tigger.
The kids were very excited to see one of their newer favorites last year: Phineas & Ferb. Peanut even tried to orchestrate a copycat pose for a picture with them. Diva didn’t quite get it.
We couldn’t miss the change to take pictures with Snow White’s friend Doc & Grumpy. Grumpy, the husband, refused a photo with his namesake!
And one of my favorite Flower & Garden photos was Diva in her Snow White dress with this gorgeous Snow White topiary. It’s absolutely perfect!
We didn’t even experience all of what the Flower & Garden Festival really is. There’s many special food booths set up with small snack size services and a concert series with big name musicians appearing. I definitely need to schedule a visit around the concerts next time!
I’m really going to miss all the beauty these add to Epcot when we visit in the fall.
nikki's mickey trips 