Preview Epcot’s 2015 22nd International Flower and Garden Festival Part 1

Epcot’s annual Flower and Garden Festival begins March 4th with new displays, topiaries, mini-gardens, garden rocks bands, food and beverages. This is the first of our 2 part blog Previewing the Festival!

The Flower and Garden team has created new and different experiences for this year’s festival. Linda Eckwerth and myself were part of the invited media to experience a preview of the festival. Horticulture Manager Eric Darden and Landscape Architect Carla Shuman provided an in-depth look at some of this year’s displays.

Just in cause you were wondering just how detailed the festival plans are, Carla shared a glimpse of the incredibly detailed horticulture planning document.

Here is just a sampling of the highlights for the 2015 festival.

This year’s butterfly topiary garden takes flight showing the butterflies landing on the flowers.

Lightening McQueen and Mater are back, this time in an expanded play area garden called “The Cactus Road Rally Garden”. Check out the radiators :). Learn more about how cactus store water in the hot dry climates. Look for the not so hidden radiators 🙂

Butterflies on the Go has a new wider sidewalk for folks to use. The butterflies will be released for the first time on Tuesday and by the Festival’s official opening on Wednesday hundreds of butterflies will be around. Ever wonder why the Butterfly House is closed at night, well, simply, the butterflies don’t fly at night! Each week about 1,000 chrysalis are delivered to the butterfly house. Watch the butterfly emerge from the chrysalis – takes 20-30 minutes to watch them begin to fly.

One of the highlights of this year’s festival are the topiaries of Anna and Elsa. Last year’s experiment with Snow White’s eyes worked really well. So, Anna and Elsa have much more expressive faces. The scene is from the end of the film, when Elsa realizes she can make everything right again. So the flowers are half winter and half summer.

Another new area this year is called Urban Farm Eats showcasing that it’s not that hard to grow your own food. The garden not only shows vegetables but also an aqua-ponics system with tilapia – the fish waste fertilize the plants, the plants clean the water that the fish live in. Learn more about this ancient technique by talking to folks in the Urban Farm Eats garden.

All this and we haven’t even started to explore World Showcase! This year’s festival guide is the actual Epcot map, so no need to jostle around 2 maps to figure out what to do.

Our interview with Eric Darden highlights a few other new areas:

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our Preview as we highlight the Outdoor Kitchens new foods and beverages.

AllEars was invited by Disney to the Epcot Flower and Garden Media Preview on February 27, 2015. We were given a special horticulture tour, and complementary tastes of the food and beverages.

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