EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival
EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival is an annual spring festival at EPCOT at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, centred on horticultural displays, character topiaries and garden-themed programming. Running from early spring into late May or early June and included with regular admission, it is the oldest of EPCOT's four seasonal festivals and the event that established the park's festival model, later extended by the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival, the EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays and the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts.
History
The festival premiered on April 29, 1994, running for 38 days. It was created to draw visitors during the spring period, when school terms kept family attendance lower, and in its first form it was principally a horticultural event: display gardens, topiaries and expert presentations, without the food marketplaces that now accompany it.
The festival lengthened steadily, reaching about 90 days by the late 2010s. A shortened edition was held in 2020 before Walt Disney World closed for the pandemic, and the event returned in full the following years, generally beginning in late February or early March. Disney horticulture plants the festival months in advance, and the displays are maintained and refreshed throughout the run as plantings cycle out of bloom.
Topiaries and gardens
The festival's signature elements are its topiaries — shrubs and planted frames shaped and detailed to represent Disney characters, numbering in the dozens across the park. Principal figures are placed at the park entrance and around World Showcase, with new or redesigned pieces introduced most years to reflect recent films as well as established characters.
Alongside them sit themed gardens of several kinds: butterfly houses stocked with live butterflies and the plants that sustain them, herb and vegetable gardens, Shakespeare and tea gardens attached to the United Kingdom Pavilion, bonsai collections in the Japan Pavilion, and floating gardens on the waterways of the former Future World area. A festival centre has at different times occupied the former Wonders of Life pavilion and, more recently, CommuniCore Hall, hosting displays, merchandise and gardening presentations.
Food and music
Food arrived late in the festival's history. Outdoor Kitchens — small-portion marketplaces on the model of Food & Wine, but with menus weighted toward fresh and garden produce — were introduced in 2013 and have since become a substantial part of the event, numbering around fifteen to twenty in recent editions.
Live music is provided by the Garden Rocks concert series at the America Gardens Theatre, presenting several short sets nightly, chiefly by established rock and pop acts, with dining packages sold for reserved seating. Earlier concert series under different names performed the same function from the festival's early years.
Activities
Family programming has included playgrounds built temporarily for the festival, scavenger hunts — Spike the Bee, a character originating in Donald Duck cartoons, fronts the long-running pollination-themed hunt — and guided tours, including the long-established Behind the Seeds tour of The Land pavilion's greenhouses, which is offered year-round but promoted during the festival. Gardening seminars by television presenters and Disney horticulturists formed a larger part of early editions than they do today.