Sign of the Times

By C.J. Hirschfield

You’d be amazed how many people don’t know Children’s Fairyland exists (or “still exists”). It’s not that we’re a secret, exactly, but our public façade has always been a bit … reserved. If you were driving past our Grand Avenue entrance in a hurry, you could easily miss us.

Well, no longer.

Last Friday, for the first time in Fairyland history – and just in time for our 68^th anniversary on Sept. 2 – we got an entrance sign that does us proud.

And it took only 10 years of planning and 15 months of groundwork.

The Dragon Roars Back

By C.J. Hirschfield

Topiary is the horticultural practice of training live perennial plants by clipping foliage to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, usually geometric or fanciful. European topiary dates back to Roman times.

Walt Disney – who by now you must know was heavily influenced by Children’s Fairyland – helped bring the American portable style of topiary into being around 1962, when he used steel-wire frames through which plants extended as they grew. He re-created his cartoon characters as landscape shrubbery throughout Disneyland.

Fairyland got into the topiary game in 1999. The New York Times noted our achievement with this headline: “Dusting Off an Enchanted Land and Adding Some Dragons.” 

Behold the dragon's newly trimmed face!