White & Purple

White & Purple.jpg, a photo by Brian E Mitchell on Flickr.
1/640 200mm f2.8 0EV

I haven't blogged about a flower shot in awhile, so i think I'm due.

Flowers fascinate me as I've mentioned here before. What fascinates me almost as much is the incredible amount of time that Disney spends on them.

Of the roughly 50,000 people that Disney employs in Orlando only about 750 of them work in the horticulture department. In 2003 there were 175,000 trees, four million shrubs, 13,000 rose bushes, and 2,000 acres of turf, at least according to National Geographic.

I'm sure that today there are at least as many plants, trees, and bushes as there were in 2003. All of them maintained by less than a thousand people.

They replace hundreds if not thousands of plants every night throughout all four Disney parks and the Downtown Disney area. Most of this is done long after the guest have departed, well hidden from public view. They work through the night so that in the morning the park's landscaping looks fresh and new.

So the next time you're at Disney take a minute to look at the landscaping. People you will probably never see spend their lives making it look just exactly right. All the way down to one small White & Purple flower.