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Busch Gardens Williamsburg Interview with Eileen Weldon
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Busch Gardens Williamsburg Interview with Eileen Weldon / By: Clint Novak, Monday, March 07, 2005 -
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One of the best theme parks in the world is also recognized as one of the best landscaped parks in the world. When walking along the paths of Busch Gardens Williamsburg you often loss your self in all the plants, wildlife, and themeing of the 365 acre park. Every year the park opens and looks perfect all the way tell parks closes.
Clint Novak the host of In the Loop talked with Eileen Weldon, Landscape Manager, the person in charge of making the park one of the must beautiful parks on the planet. She talks about what kind of work goes in to complementing the themeing of rides, attractions, and areas of the park. You can here the interview here.
Clint Novak: Hey what’s going on its Clint Novak from In the Loop. Now one of the greatest parks to go to in the US and most of the world is Busch Gardens Williamsburg. They have the best Themeing and Best Landscaping, and has won many awards for it. I have Eileen Weldon the Landscaping Manager at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. She is in charge of all the beauty we see at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.
Eileen Weldon: Well thank you that’s very generous. We have 365 acres of natural beauty so we have a wonderful pallet to work with. So we just enhance the natural beauty of the park
Clint: Yes. And you guys have everything from water falls to the flowers and the greens and all that. How much work does something like this take?
Eileen: It takes a lot of work. I am glad that you relies that it takes that work. We are really fortunate that the folks that help us with this love what they do. It’s a fun place to work, and we try very hard, even on the coldest, rainiest days when were out there working, to have a little fun every day.
Clint: You guys have green houses that run year round?
Eileen: Correct. We’ve god several green houses. We have 17,000 feet of growing space behind the scans. We grow all the specialty items that we have in the park. The green house production happens all the time.
Clint: What kind of preparations are you guys going thro right now for the 2005 season?
Eileen: Right now we have about 30 people doing what we call the spring landscape getting the park ready for opening on march 19th. And were doing spring landscaping, and clean up. Were doing the green house production, landscape renovations, and replacing the winter damage to nursery stuff.
Clint: Therese a lot of different themeing that goes in to the park from Germany to Ireland. What kind of work does it take to do the different kind of landscaping to the themeings that go in to Busch Gardens
Eileen: That’s what makes it fun. We get to use the themeing of the park to create landscaping that will enhance the guest experience. We cant use authentic plant materials from the European countries cause of the difference in climates. But we try to recreate plants that look familiar to plants that you would see. And the European country’s and the country’s of Italy that we represented here. That’s a really cool part of the job.
Clint: I would think it would be. Now do you like the roller Coasters?
Eileen: Oh yes. I like the coasters. I here you like the roller Coasters too.
Clint: Oh yes. The call me Coaster Clint. What is your favorite coaster in Busch Gardens
Eileen: I would say Apollo’s. I am sure that will be replaced with DarKastle this year. That will most likely be my new favorite.
Clint: Can you give us a sneak peek of what kind of landscaping that you will be doing for that ride?
Eileen: We are in the of beginning that. What were going to use is use dark foliage, Burgundy, and some that are almost black. Were going to use creepy looking plants. Stuff with weeping branches and such. It will be very dark look with rocks. That is what will complement the themeing of the ride
Clint: One last question. Most guest walking in the park may not notice some of the things you do every day. Can you point out something in the park that some one would not notice just walking around the park.
Eileen: Well sure. Pompeii was a fun project and its interesting. As you approach Pompeii on the far side of the sidewalk by the rail road tracks was designed to be more formal. But as you keep walking you come to the ruins area. That was done with a lot of rock and plants that are over growing and weedy looking so it looks like it was quickly abounded. And so it’s a rougher look and highly maintained but it is designed to look like its not maintained at all. That is one of the neat things that we get to do with themeing. And that may not be something every person would see as your walking thro the area.
Clint: That’s right. They would not even think twice about it. That is the part you should be the most happy with. They did not even have to think about it, it just blended in. Well thank you very much Eileen for talking with us today
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