Imaginary Worlds: Alice in Wonderland coming to Botanical Garden

Visitors are sure to think they’ve fallen down a rabbit hole this May when Imaginary Worlds: Alice in Wonderland springs to life at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

The exhibition of giant topiary-like plant sculptures, presented May 11 – Oct. 27 at both the Midtown and Gainesville gardens, is back by popular demand after last summer's show, Imaginary Worlds: Once Upon a Time. Many of last year's crowd-favorite sculptures will make a comeback – but donning coats of different plant palettes.

PHOTOS: Imaginary Worlds at Atlanta Botanical Garden

“The focus of the new show clearly is Alice and many in the cast of characters from Lewis Carroll’s classic novel,” president & CEO Mary Pat Matheson said. “But what will no doubt blow visitors away is the sheer size of these sculptures."

A giant White Rabbit towers more than 27 feet as it floats inside an upside-down umbrella in the Skyline Garden pond. That tops even the Garden’s resident Earth Goddess sculpture, at 22 feet. On the Skyline Lawn is an expansive chess board bordered by nine heart “trees” each more than 12 feet tall, with a giant cheshire cat poised nearby.

Making encore appearances from 2018 are the dragon, mammoth, mermaid, phoenix, camels and Pegasus – many sporting all-new plantings. At the Gainesville Garden, look for a return of the friendly ogre along with Rip van Winkle, bears and frogs.

The Garden first introduced its guests to Imaginary Worlds in 2013 when it presented the United States’ first major exhibition of mosaiculture – the horticultural art of creating giant sculptures using steel forms covered in thousands of living plants. Mosaiculture is the creative genius of International Mosaiculture of Montreal, a nonprofit group that has staged wildly successful exhibitions of its work around the world.

The organization hosted its first major exhibition and competition in Montreal in 2000 to celebrate the Millennium and proved an instant hit with one million visitors. Since then, it has extended its reach by participating in major exhibitions in Shanghai, Beijing, and Hamamatsu, Japan.

In Atlanta, visitors may explore the new exhibition during evening hours every Thursday at Cocktails in the Garden, when the sculptures are dramatically lit.

Cox Media Group