At Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World world I saw 4 yew pines by the bathrooms in Tomorrowland. I had never seen a yew pine before. They were pruned in a topiary system and each had 5 clouds. Their orientation was planetary, or interplanetary. They were galactic trees. I imagined I was at a space station. I thought of the Jetsons. They were staggered in height like a three-dimensional bar graph. Their organization was calculated and quite inorganic, if that is possible. Their form immediately conveyed a futuristic mood. The pruning method and system anchored the atmosphere of Tomorrowland.

The next day we went to Hollywood. Shade was hard to find. I found some where lacebark elms threw dapples of it on the paving. I saw a grouping of pollarded sycamores, with one newly planted sycamore not yet pollarded. They must have lost one. Walt Disney World has a nursery with an extensive inventory ready to replace any tree that they might lose. Back-ups of back ups. In show business they call these extras. The show goes on even if something goes wrong in Hollywood. I saw palms. The palms did it for me. The palms put me in Hollywood, right on Sunset Boulevard.

A quote by Michael D. Eisner under a live oak tree on a bronze plaque read, “the world you have entered was created by the Walt Disney Company and is dedicated to Hollywood—not a place on the map, but a state of mind that exists wherever people dream and wonder and imagine, a place where illusion and reality are fused by technological magic. We welcome you to a Hollywood that never was—and always will be.”

Tree selection, planting and pruning is certainly technological magic.

There were many other trees in the Bay Lake landscape. I noticed some of these trees at the Wilderness Lodge where we stayed and others along the highway as we road the bus from park to park. There was river birch, which is airy and wispy. There was bald cypress, which is also wispy, but much more stately than birch. Sweetgum foliage is angular. I saw sweetgum growing between two large pines when we were boarding the monorail at Magic Kingdom. It was interesting, this pairing of deciduous and evergreen. They have subtle differences in form, which were silhouetted by the setting sun and threw long shadows on the lawn. There are many pines that grow together along the highways: ponderosa pines, longleaf pines, loblolly pines. They are fountains of green. The pines were punctuated by waxy southern magnolias that shimmer, and also with more palms. This is what landscape designers mean when they say “texture.” Before this was Walt Disney World this was swampland. It still seeps through in places. Form largely influences texture.

What about the old man’s beard, the Spanish moss that hangs from the live oaks everywhere. This puts me in the south, it puts me in the mood of the south, because in the south Spanish moss hangs from live oaks, and I wish I could see it more. But we don’t have it in the northeast. It’s a lichen. It’s an indicator of clean air. Old men are indicators of clean air too, I think. It makes me think of Charleston, South Carolina, where I have been only once. I remember the live oaks and the Spanish moss there. The wide, reaching branches, the deep shade. Shade is a commodity in the hot south. Spanish moss hanging from live oaks slows time down a little bit, a little bit like old men sitting in the shade.

At Animal Kingdom we walked into Pandora. Silk floss trees lined a walkway as we waited in line for a ride. Pandora is an imaginary world, but the silk floss tree is real. The silk floss tree, when you see the big spikes arranged on its trunk, and the green striations and gray plates of its bark, seems like it should be an imaginary tree, but it is a real tree, and so Pandora became real. This is what trees do, they make the world real.

It was the 2026 Flower and Garden Festival at Epcot during our visit. The floral design displays were magnificent. The Behind the Seeds Greenhouse Tour was informative and inspiring. It shed light on the future of horticulture and the practices being implemented to improve the quality of food while preserving land. We returned to Epcot that evening for the fireworks display and walked through Japan in route to Mexico (counterclockwise around the World Showcase Lagoon) and I saw a black pine pruned in a Niwaki system. Its crown was illuminated by the soft glow of a lantern. 

There is a great quote by Martin Amis, “style is morality.” Style has much to do with form. So there is a bit of form that goes into morality too, I think. For instance, styling in bonsai is the practice of encouraging trees and their future form through mechanical controls like wiring branches into place and pinching new growth. It is the ability to see tomorrow in the small moments of today. Style is presence. Bonsai is like meditation. It is quiet, but the result is powerful. Bonsai trees have amazing form because they are created with meditated style, and with ascetic commitment and consistency, which is a moral endeavor. There are many people who practice bonsai. Buddhist monks practice bonsai. Buddhist monks have style.

There was a trident maple on display in the small bonsai garden at Epcot. It was in training for 19 years and presented by Josh Brown (I don’t think he is a Buddhist monk). The style was root over rock. The tiny, exaggerated root flare and playful lean made it look 400 years old. It’s size made it unbelievable. But I had to believe it. I imagined what it would be like if I was Remy from Ratatouille, swinging from its branches.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning bacteriologist Rene Dubos said “symbiotic relationships mean creative partnerships. The earth is to be seen neither as an ecosystem to be preserved unchanged nor as a quarry to be exploited for selfish and short-range economic reasons, but as a garden to be cultivated for the development of its own potentialities of the human adventure. The goal of this relationship is not the maintenance of the status quo, but the emergence of new phenomena and new values.”

So we play with trees and we work and re-work their forms, to find new phenomena and new values, perhaps. Sometimes it does not work—the human adventure—but when it does work, we can create a fresh mood, a new world, right here.