In April 2024’s newsletter, we found inspiration in a modern sort of pleasure garden — the insanely well-tended and lush landscapes at a certain theme park in Anaheim.
In the snaking line that leads to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Anaheim California, a crowd wends its way through a small courtyard whose only source of shade is a pair of magnolia trees. Fed by stale coca-colas and underground irrigation pipes, these heroic trees bloom occasionally in the spring, suffusing the crowd with an olfactory version of ersatz southern charm. The Jungle Cruise, for its part, exhibits tropical plants imported from around the world to create an incongruously wet landscape in the dry climate that once hosted orange groves. Animatronic monkeys and hippos complete this picture.
“The Happiest Place on Earth” claims this right in a trademark from 1998. To their credit, Disneyland supports its happy-making identity with happy-making botany: 18,000 trees, 125,000 shrubs, and an astonishing 1 million annuals and perennials are planted each year. This is, in its way, a completely modern, commercialized example of an ancient concept: the pleasure garden.
Read the email newsletter for March 2023, here.
