By: Sarah Stone
Since 1994, EPCOT has held a Flower and Garden Festival each spring to showcase elaborate topiaries, beautiful garden outposts, delicious food, and much more. It’s a fantastic experience if you have the chance to go—and yes, much like Food and Wine in the summer and fall, drinking around the world and getting festival passport stamps is a must!
I honestly can’t decide which of the two festivals is my favorite, so my husband Dave and I make sure to head to EPCOT at least twice a year to attend both. This year, the EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival runs through July 5th, so if you’re planning a Disney World trip, this is a can’t-miss.
Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind
We headed up to Orlando in late March to enjoy two days of Hollywood Studios and EPCOT. (One of these days I’ll write a Hollywood Studios post, but today the focus is on EPCOT!) Our first stop was Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind—I’ve been on it twice now, and gotta say it’s quickly becoming one of my absolute favorites.
In line for Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.
We also hopped on Test Track, Journey into Imagination, Soarin’ Around the World, and Spaceship Earth—we skipped Frozen Ever After and Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure this time, but they’re both wonderful. The rides are an article for a different day—let’s get to the pretty stuff!
Butterfly Landing
If you’re a plant person like I am—I enthusiastically tell anyone who will listen that we have more than 60 different palm trees and dozens of other types of plants throughout our front and back yards—you will adore the EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival. And you definitely can’t miss Butterfly Landing. This outpost is open until dusk each day during the festival, and really, it’s so easy to spend a lot of time here reading the interpretive panels and seeing how many butterflies you can spy on any single plant.
The butterfly garden had four different types of butterflies—monarch, malachite, common buckeye, and zebra longwing—as well as many, many plant species.
A butterfly resting on a firecracker plant.
You can see butterflies in their chrysalises here!
The Topiaries
The highlight of the EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival is its many topiaries depicting Disney characters as well as animals like geese and butterflies. Here are just a few that you can find this year:
At the entrance to EPCOT, with Mirabel, Antonio, Isabela, and Luisa from Encanto.
Mickey and Minnie, plus Pluto and Chip ‘n’ Dale.
Figment built from succulents—I think this was my favorite of the many topiaries we encountered around the park.
Toy Story topiaries—Dave liked the monkeys the best.
Just as impressive as the topiaries themselves are the gardens surrounding them—the Lion King, Bambi, and Peter Pan ones were absolutely gorgeous.\
Canada geese and pond outside of the Canadian pavilion, where we stopped in to watch Canada Far and Wide, narrated by the wonderful Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy.
There were tons of character topiaries throughout EPCOT, so I’ll call it quits here on photos and just urge you to book a trip here and enjoy the views for yourself!
Other Gardens
The gardens and plants I’m highlighting throughout this article don’t even begin to scratch the surface of what you can see at the Flower and Garden Festival. Two that I really loved outside of the topiary displays were the Miniature Garden outside of the Germany pavilion, as well as the bonsai displays and Zen garden around the Japan pavilion.
This is the Miniature Garden outside of the Germany pavilion—if you get up close, you will be able to see Snow White and some other fun Easter eggs.
I spend most of my time in the Japan pavilion at EPCOT (and spend far too much money at the store full of goodies for complete nerds like myself)—there are many bonsais throughout the area, with a few including:
- Chinese banyan (Ficus microcarpa)
- Japanese boxwood (Buxus microphylla)
- Parrot’s beak (Gmelina philippensis)
- Cuban laurel (Ficus macrocarpa)
- Brazilian raintree (Chloroleucon tortum)
The Zen Garden, also in the Japan pavilion.
Also in the Japan pavilion, you’ll find an exhibit on Kawaii culture—this piece by Sebastian Masuda is called Melty-Go-Round (Harajuku Girl), and was created specifically for the exhibition at EPCOT.
Some Good Bites
We ate so much, and tried to mainly stick to bites that were featured specifically for the Flower and Garden Festival, but of course I couldn’t resist poutine and a few other go-tos for every EPCOT trip. Sadly we did not get all the stamps for our festival passport—next time though! Here are just a few of the highlights:
Related: EPCOT Food & Wine Festival: Drinking Around the World
Avocado toast with marinated toybox tomatoes on toasted ciabatta.
Fried cinnamon roll bites with cream cheese frosting and candied bacon.
I loved the Honey Bee-Stro so, so, so much. We got:
- Chicken and waffles with whipped honey butter and spicy honey
- Honey-mascarpone cheesecake with honey whipped cream, honeycomb, crystalized honey, whipped honey, dehydrated honey, and fennel pollen merengue kisses
- Honey-peach cobbler freeze
- Florida Orange Groves Winery Orange Blossom Honey Wine
Potato pancakes with Bitburger Premium Pils, Stiegl Brewery Radler Raspberry, and Flensburger Dunkel at Bauernmarkt.
Inside the Germany pavilion, we tried the Mozart Chocolate Liqueur, which was better than drinking Baileys from a shoe.
Spicy mala chicken skewer with peanut sauce, plus vegetable dumplings at the Lotus House by the China pavilion.
Wrapping Up
We finished up our adventure by watching the Pointer Sisters perform at Garden Rocks—nightly concerts featuring different bands throughout the run of the festival. They were fantastic! And I’m So Excited to go back to EPCOT for next year’s International Flower and Garden Festival (sorry, I had to…)!
Have you had the chance to check out this festival? Share your stories and advice with the Frayed Passport community!
About the Author
As the editor-in-chief of Frayed Passport, my goal is to help you build a lifestyle that lets you travel the world whenever you want and however long you want, and not worry about where your next paycheck will come from. I've been to 20+ countries and five continents, lived for years as a full-time digital nomad, and have worked completely remotely since 2015. If you would like to share your story with our community, or partner with Frayed Passport, get in touch with me at sarah@frayedpassport.com!
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