Visitors are flocking to see the celebrity living at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. She lounges like a movie star among the flowers, with one hand playing in the fountain in the Cascades Garden.
The otherworldly creature is a major tourist draw for obvious reasons: She is a 25-foot-tall topiary-type sculpture covered in living plants called the Earth Goddess.
Atlanta Botanical Garden is home to 25-foot-tall Earth Goddess. (Photo courtesy of Atlanta Botanical Gardens)Photo courtesy of Atlanta Botanical Gardens
Lovingly referred to as the “Green Queen” by ABG staff, she comes to life each spring when as many as 20,000 plants are added to her steel frame, according to Jim Smith, the Gardens’ horticulture manager.
The Earth Goddess “hibernates” in winter – her framework is covered in lights at Christmas and then is bare until about April 15, when planting begins.
She was created by Mosaiculture International of Montreal. The Gardens’ Public Relations Manager, Danny Flanders, called her “the Gardens’ icon.”
Smith said the “work of topiary-like mosaiculture is a masterpiece of twisted steel and tangled irrigation tubes – stuffed with enough soil to fill a swimming pool.”
The Botanical Garden explained on its Facebook page: “Unlike topiary, where plants are pruned into ornamental shapes, Earth Goddess is actually a work of mosaiculture, which treats individual plants like colored stones or tiles in a mosaic. She doesn’t mind the confusion, and after a couple of weeks of growth, she’ll be even more spectacular.”
The sculpture was added to the gardens in 2013.
Detail of the Earth Goddess’ hand at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. (Photo courtesy of Atlanta Botanical Gardens)Photo courtesy of Atlanta Botanical Gardens
Smith said the sculpture began her journey to Atlanta years before her arrival. “It took years of evolving conceptual renderings, countless calls with engineers, scores of staff members and miles of hand-sculpted pencil steel to create…
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