Alice exhibit turns Memphis Botanic Garden into Wonderland

The Cheshire Cat greets visitors outside the Memphis Botanic Garden's Sensory Garden. The larger-than-life cat is 5ft, 8in long and weighs approximately 2,500 pounds. Photo credit: Mike Kerr
The Cheshire Cat greets visitors outside the Memphis Botanic Garden's Sensory Garden. The larger-than-life cat is 5ft, 8in long and weighs approximately 2,500 pounds. Photo credit: Mike Kerr
The Cheshire Cat greets visitors outside the Memphis Botanic Garden’s Sensory Garden. The larger-than-life cat is 5ft, 8in long and weighs approximately 2,500 pounds. Photo credit: Mike Kerr

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – Published in 1865, Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece of the strange, whimsical and surreal, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, has inspired movies, stage plays, drawings, songs and cartoons. At the Memphis Botanic Garden, it has inspired foliage. To be more specific, the Queen with her flamingo croquet mallet, the Cheshire Cat with his magical grin, the deck-of-cards soldiers and young Alice herself have been brought to literal if botanical life in the form of “mosaiculture” sculptures, placed within the attraction’s grounds for an exhibit titled Alice’s Adventures in the Garden. (Like most adaptations of Alice, the exhibit also borrows elements from Carroll’s 1871 sequel, Through the Looking Glass.)

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