A Relatively Easy Job

When constructing a theme park there are always going to be wild stories, right? When it came to EPCOT Center some of the best stories came out of the landscaping. Imagine the sight of installing a thirty-five-foot tall peach palm into the greenhouses of The Land pavilion. Let’s up the ante and make it so the tree had to fit through a six-foot wide door and that the landscapers had vaseline available in case they had to grease the door jams. Sounds pretty interesting, doesn’t it? Would you believe it if I told you that that was nothing compared to the ordeal the peach palm and crews went through in order to obtain the tree?

Tony Virginia had been put in charge of the tree’s excavation from the tree farm in Miami as it was extremely rare and expensive and the process had to be closely monitored. It would turn out to be much more of an adventure than he had planned, but perhaps I should let him tell the tale, “At first we thought it would be a relatively easy job. We began digging out the root system and then discovered that the palm was growing out of a bed of pure coral. The roots were all through the stuff, so we brought in the jack hammers. It was 10:30 at night before we broke through. We had a big crane hooked up to lift the tree… we made the last cut and signaled the operator to pull up… there was a surge as the tree broke loose, it hit a power line, the transformer flew off, the pole caught on fire… sparks were flying, beneath was a greenhouse full of rare palms… five police cars, three power company trucks and a lot of angry neighbors were all on hand!”

Just your typical day of landscaping, right?