EXHIBIT PREVIEW
“Imaginary Worlds: A New Kingdom of Plant Giants” and “The Four Seasons”
Atlanta Botanical Garden. 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays (until 10 p.m. Thursdays for Cocktails in the Garden). May 3 through October. $18.95, $12.95 ages 3-12, free under 3. 1345 Piedmont Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 404-876-5859, www.atlantabotanicalgarden.org.
Those wild things that made Atlantans' hearts sing last spring and summer at the Atlanta Botanical Garden are back for an encore. But it's not exactly the same outdoor exhibit of "mosaiculture" creatures that record-breaking crowds may remember.
Starting Saturday, this year’s edition, with the new title “Imaginary Worlds: A New Kingdom of Plant Giants,” features 28 sculptures — actually steel forms festooned with thousands of living plants that grow in hidden soil-and-sphagnum-moss-filled netting. The 19 returning creations, including 25-foot-tall Earth Goddess and the magical unicorn, have been “re-imagined” with different plantings. Many now rise out of new settings.
Nine new beasties have joined the menagerie: four frogs, a gorilla trio and a pair of orangutans. Like last year’s models, they were created by International Mosaiculture of Montreal.
Also new for the season at the 30-acre garden are artist Philip Haas’ “Four Seasons,” a quartet of 15-foot-tall, cornucopia-like sculptures. Inspired by Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Haas’ busts merge fruits, vegetables, twigs and leaves in portraits suggesting the essence of spring, summer, fall and winter.
Haas’ fiberglass set was exhibited at the New York Botanical Garden last summer. In Atlanta, you’ll find them emerging from beds lining the Great Lawn.
More than 162,000 guests visited “Imaginary Worlds: Plants Larger Than Life” last May through October, doubling attendance at the Midtown attraction over the same period in 2012. All that increased foot traffic helped grow garden membership 30 percent, to more than 25,000 households, and laid the groundwork for the encore.
