Inside Walt Disney World's Eight-Month Effort to Build EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival Topiaries
Walt Disney World's horticulture team explains the eight-month, architecture-style engineering that goes into creating the EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival's iconic topiaries.
Each spring, guests wandering through EPCOT encounter towering sculptures of elephants, pandas, and fantastical creatures covered in living blooms. Few realise that these displays begin taking shape long before the festival gates open. According to a behind-the-scenes look at Walt Disney World's Flower & Garden Festival, the process of building each topiary can take roughly eight months from initial concept to final installation.
From Sketch to Steel Skeleton
The work starts with a design team that sketches the figure and then sculpts a steel framework. Crews attach a layer of steel mesh and roughly 10,000 zip ties to create the base shape. The result is described as something closer to architecture than landscaping, with engineers monitoring weight, wind resistance, and irrigation routes before a single flower is added.
Covering the Frame in Living Color
Once the skeleton is sound, the horticulture team plugs thousands of annual plants into the frame by hand. Soil is packed into the mesh, and drip lines are threaded through the structure so the displays can be watered nightly. The painstaking process means a single topiary can require several weeks of planting alone, with crews returning throughout the festival to swap out faded blooms for fresh ones.
Why the Investment Matters
Disney says the topiaries are designed to be durable enough to survive Florida sun, rain, and the curious hands of millions of guests. The festival, which runs from early March through early July, has become a major draw for visitors looking for photo opportunities and themed food stands. The deliberate, months-long build is part of what keeps the displays looking polished from opening day to closing weekend.