Walt Disney World presents Epcot’s Flower & Garden Festival
Mickey and friends greet visitors to the 2012 Epcot Flower and Garden Festival. Photo Rori Paul
With its yearly ode to spring, Walt Disney World again launches the blooms and buds of the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival. A beautiful trip throughout Epcot, Flowers and Gardens are dispersed throughout, with the 2012 show being a true touch of wonder. Our third year running, we’ve discovered that Flower and Garden is best viewed from about week 3 until about the second to last week – depending on how the calendar falls – and this year was no exception.
Fullness is throughout, ripe at all turns, the blooming bundles you’ll find around the park is well worthy a journey. Too soon and things are sparse and spindly, too late and all the bloom is rubbing off. That peak timing will assure you the best of views and photos.
We also decided very quickly that 2012 has been by far the best of our three years, with the topiary placed in the most perfect locations for their story and the other displays right on the money. While Disney has settled into the same topiary figures for all three, somehow all in their newest locations (except Lady & the Tramp who remain their growing old spot at the foot of the stairs in Italy) plays out on a perfect stage.
From the grand beginning of Mickey as the Sorcerer’s apprentice capturing the mood of the excitement as you enter, Space Ship Earth a majestic backdrop, to those cuddly dwarfs marching their way through a flowery prairie at the opposite end of the park in Germany, this is a grand journey through the park, around Future World – where the Festival Center remains – through the charm of World Showcase.
Enjoy here part of the journey and look for more photos in our continuing posts on the 2012 event, and enjoy the center stage of Walt Disney World’s horticulture department as it struts its stuff in the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival. (All photos were taken by and are copyright Rori Paul, Walt Disney World and its properties are copyright the Walt Disney Company)
Enjoy the playful butterflies fluttering through Bambi’s Butterfly House
The exotic feel of this flower joins the colorful display within Bambi’s Butterfly House. Rich colors
contrast the butterflies that currently reside in here.
Bambi and friends return this year as cure as ever
to play with their butterfly friends. One can’t seem to figure out if they
should be looking at the topiary, flowers, or fluttering little buggers.
This not-so-hidden Mickey would make a wonderful
addition to any garden. Much of what the Flower & Garden Festival does
is to inspire at home gardeners in their pursuits. This year’s event
goes a long way in doing that particularly well.
Many people don’t realize that pineapple are native to Florida.
Stop by and see these growing wonderfully well.
As always, Canada is alive with beautiful blooms and this year, a special friend
makes an appearance.
What a lovely setting along the pathway to France for
Sleeping Beauty and her prince to be dancing.
Beauty and her Beast return, this time in France
along the walkway. Their charm moves one to hope he gets a kiss
before time runs out…
We loved this creative garden wall, an inspiration for turning
even the most bland and dull looking wall materials into
a wonderful, full of life garden display.
Be inspired to turn everyday items into colorful
garden buckets and pots. Let the whole family
show off their love of gardening with each person’s shoes.
Look for more from the Epcot Flower & Garden Festival.
