Credit Where Credit's Due

The Jungle Cruise attractions in the Disney Parks transport Guests down exotic rivers of the world on a wacky, wild adventure. Many details go into the telling of the Jungle Cruise story, but perhaps none is as important as the landscape. Over the years, Imagineers have taken a California orange grove, Florida swamp and Asian landfill and converted them into lush, tropical environments.

Most of these efforts were conducted or directed by Disney Legend and Imagineering Master Landscape Architect Bill Evans. A tribute to him stands outside the entrance of the Jungle Cruise in the Magic Kingdom:

This ficus nitida (also known as a Chinese Banyan tree) sits crated on the Jungle Cruise dock, ready for transport. The crate bears the label, "Evans Exotic Plant Exporters, Ltd."

Bill's family nursery business in L.A. was popular among the Hollywood elite, due to the wide variety of exotic plants he was able to import and propagate. In the early '50s, when Walt Disney was creating his backyard railroad, he hired the Evans nursery to do the landscape design. A year later, Walt asked Bill to come work on Disneyland.

Bill stayed with Imagineering, ultimately working on every Disney Park through Disney's Animal Kingdom in 1998.

Today, few may know his name (my son, Evan, thinks the crate refers to him), but many enjoy and appreciate the legacy Bill Evans left behind.