Disney Making Orange Groves into Jungle

One of the things I love about garden and farm groups is the cross-pollination that occurs on a daily basis between some of the best gardeners, horticulturalists, breeders, propagators, and innovators in the green industry.

Garden clubs and societies and farm bureaus are nothing new. The Orange County Farm Bureau recently celebrated their 100th anniversary. That would have been some group to be a part of. During the early 1950's some of the Orange County Farm Bureau board members included a couple of famous Walters- Disney and Knott, and another organic product innovator named H. Clay Kellogg.

Disney's favorite children's book was The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, and Disney had a vision for the first ride to be conceived for his groundbreaking amusement park to bring the Jungle Book to life for visitors by taking them on a jungle cruise throughout the tropical rivers of the world. Disney's desire was to turn Orange county farm land better suited to beans, strawberries, and oranges into a tropical rainforest.

He brought in horticultural product producer Kellogg into the process. The OC soil lacked the organic material and pH for tropical plants. Kellogg blended redwood fibers with an existing garden product Kellogg produced at the time and Gromulch was born. Gromulch would become the best selling single garden amendment product sold in the west. The vintage photo of the day is of Walt Disney and H. Clay Kellogg at the site of the nascent Jungle Cruise attraction in 1953.