As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.

The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”

For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have the President and CEO of the Atlanta Botanical Garden Mary Pat Matheson join me as my guest! Read on to explore our conversation, and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.

Frank Beddor
I’d like to welcome Mary Pat Matheson to the All Things Alice podcast. She is the President and CEO of the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Mary Pat, so nice to meet you.

Mary Pat Matheson 
Nice to meet you too, Frank

FB
I understand we both spent some time in Utah. 

MPM
Yeah, I lived there for 30 years. What took you to Utah?

FB
I was on the U.S. Ski Team and I lived there for about five years. I had a condo in Salt Lake City and I drove up to Park City and Snowbird.

MPM
You can't live in Utah and not ski. It’s a long winter. We were in Park City for about 11 years before we moved to Atlanta.

FB
Wow. I bet that was a big adjustment.

MPM
It was changing climate, culture, geography, flora, fauna, you name it. It was a big change, but I was I was ready. I'd been at Red Butte Garden and Arboretum in Salt Lake for 20 years and my husband and I talked about it and decided it would be a good thing for my career. Atlanta has turned out to be such a great city. We really love the city and the diversity. My husband is retired now and we have a farm in Athens, Georgia, where the University of Georgia is, so he gets to stay there all the time and I go back and forth. We need that outdoors. We don't get the mountains and the snow in Atlanta.

FB
That's a nice combination. I sort of stopped skiing when I moved to Los Angeles but then I had kids and I had to teach the kids to ski so I fell back in love with it. I drive up to Mammoth a lot. I really miss the mountain life. Sun Valley was one of my favorite places. Park City has exploded. 

MPM
It's nuts. We kept our house for three years after we moved here and then we decided it was too hard to deal with the rental and we sold it. Now we look back and go, “Well, that was a dumb idea.” But I don't know if I would be happy there anymore. Most of our friends who stayed in Park City have left. It's just exploded. Park City Mountain Resort was owned by a family for all those years and then somebody forgot to renew their lease with the U.S. Forest Service and Vail Resorts and signed up for the lease immediately. So the family lost the resort and it's now owned by a huge conglomerate. It’s just not the same as it once was. And I do think after 11 years, eight or nine months of winter gets old.

FB
My friends who lived there all had to move down to Salt Lake City because they couldn't afford to live there anymore. It’s like with a lot of the ski resorts where all the big money from out of town comes in and then all the locals don't have anywhere to live and have to commute 45 minutes or an hour. It's nothing like it was when I was there, which was in the 80s and 90s.

MPM
You were there in the heyday. Even better snow then, too.

FB
It was amazing back then. I also was there at the start of the Sundance Film Festival, before it became such a big market. It was very, very charming. 

MPM
Before it was Sundance it was the U.S. Film Festival and they sold it to Robert Redford five years after it began. But a friend of ours, Lori Smith, ran the independent part, which is what took off, of course. It's not even a shadow of its former self. We loved it when it was like it was when you were there.

FB
I'm always interested in folks who are exploring Alice in Wonderland in all the different mediums. When I first started writing my book, The Looking Glass Wars and I started looking into how deep Alice runs in pop culture, I was amazed. When I came to Alice in Wonderland gardens it surprised me. It seemed like an outlier. Yet, here I am talking with you about this big exhibit you have in Atlanta and the New York Botanical Garden is doing its own Alice exhibit.

Your exhibit at the Atlanta Botanical Garden is called Alice’s Wonderland Returns. When was the first incarnation?

MPM
That is a very good question. This is the second iteration of it with some new work, the Singing Flowers. I believe it was on display in 2019 and into 2020. We've done work with Mosaiculture, out of Canada, going back to 2013 when we did another imaginary world show with giant cobras and then we did one with a big dragon. Alice is the newer one. 

What we found when we did it in 2019 and 2020 is Alice has a cult following. Whether you're a little tiny kid or an 80-year-old woman, you have a story about Alice in Wonderland. You have a special place in your heart for Alice. It touches almost all dimensions of life. I was out in the garden during the first show and I saw this woman. She was about 50 years old and had a little dress on, and she was holding the map. I said, “Can I help you?” And she said, “Well, I think I've seen the entire show, but I'm looking at the map because I flew here from Denver to see the Alice in Wonderland show and I don't want to leave in case I miss anything.” Then she said, “See, I wore my Alice dress, and she twirled around, and her dress had Alice in Wonderland all over.” It was hilarious. She hadn't missed anything. I walked her through the whole show but that's the way this show touches people in a way no other show we've ever done has touched people.

FB
People like dressing up and doing cosplay with Alice. Do you encourage and invite that? 

MPM
Every Thursday night from May to the end of September is “Cocktails in Wonderland”. We encourage people on Thursday night to dress up so that's really worked with the cosplay people. Even people who don't know much about cosplay still dress their kids in Alice in Wonderland stuff. 

FB
Is there a signature drink?

Mary Pat Matheson

It’s the “Queen's Gambit,” a spiced apple Margarita.

FB
That sounds lovely and delicious. Might have to try that.

I saw the photograph of the singing flowers, and I'm a big fan. I've used the singing flowers in a number of story elements in my work. So tell me about coming up with which kind of flowers you're using in this installation.

MPM
We work with a creative partner in Montreal. The art form you’ve seen images of is called Mosaiculture. Horticulture and mosaic together. Some of the older instances include manor houses in 19th century Europe would have a clock on a hill all planted with plants. That’s where this concept of mosaic and plants came together. In the late 1990s, the City of Montreal wanted to do something really special that was very green for the millennium, for two the year, 2000 and they came up with the idea of creating a nonprofit. 

Lise Cormier became the head of this new nonprofit, Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal, which worked with the province and the City of Montreal to create a major international competition. Cities around the world picked symbols of their cities or heritage or mythology from their countries and created big, beautiful images out of this topiary work. Most of them were made in Montreal but the concepts were created in different parts of the world. The show started in the summer of 2000 and I think they had 3 million guests. It was huge. Now they do shows in Canada every couple of years. I had already told them I wanted to be the first garden to showcase their work when they were ready to do something in the United States. 

Lise is the creative, inspirational person behind it all. She has a phenomenal team but she is the artist who takes the Alice story and turns it into these figures. When we told her we wanted to do Alice in Wonderland, Lise dove into the movie. She dove into the book. She studied, studied, studied, and she came up with the Singing Flowers, which flowers to use, and even what music to play based on what she got out of the book. I talked to her three days ago and we are going to do the show again next year, because it is so popular, and the Singing Flowers have some references in the book to an understory of blue flowers. So she's encouraging us to look at a blue tapestry under the Singing Flowers next year. That's the kind of detail Lise gets into. She's just so talented. Then we turn her concepts and the frames over to our horticulturists, and she has horticulturists who give us a plant list. What will grow in Montreal versus Atlanta is very different, of course, so we evaluate the plants beforehand so we know what will work here. Our horticulturalists have done this enough that they know what varieties of wet plants will do better here than they will in Montreal and vice versa. So we pick plants that will be as close to what they recommend so that the pieces look the way they're sketched out when we’re designing the show.

FB
I really encourage listeners to check out the website and take a look at some of the photographs because these oversized books are so gorgeous. The Cheshire Cat installation is one of my favorites. The chessboard and the card soldiers are another spectacular exhibit. But tell me how a visitor would experience the Alice in Wonderland story walking through the exhibit. What story elements do you emphasize?

MPM
We have interpretive signs that talk about some of the pieces and a lot of people want to know what the plants are. But then we have a cell tour, so you can hear from horticulturalists talk about the pieces. But we do a very light interpretation because we don't feel like it's our job to interpret the book because everyone has different perspectives on what it means and what it meant to you as a child. We want you to bring your imagination. Often people go home and reread the book after they've seen the show. 

FB
That’s pretty inspiring. I bet a lot of English teachers are happy with you. You have the original text but you brought up the Disney movie. Are you talking about the Tim Burton version or the animated version? What parts of either of those are in the exhibit?

MPM
The book is really the inspiration for most of the show. But we all have been touched by those two movies. Everyone's seen them. The good news is a lot of guests are still reading the book to their children. It's timeless and that's really great. Not everything in this world we live in, especially with books, is timeless. 

It's a trio. It's the two movies you mentioned, Tim Burton and Disney, as well as the book itself, and then just all the iterations of it. We've got a really creative visitor center manager and he and his team have done this really beautiful fan of playing cards over the Alice in Wonderland table in our gift shop. It's just filled with all this stuff like the Red Queen and the White Rabbit and, of course, the Cheshire Cat. There's so much you can buy that's Alice-driven too. It's a real opportunity for retail. But I just think it's the trio that really has made this so inspiring to other people. But it's the book that inspired the creation of our show.

FB
Why do you think Alice keeps reemerging as an important cultural touchstone for people after all these years? What are the ingredients that make this story last? 

MPM
That's a really hard question. I think there is a part of the book that touched people as children without a doubt. The book is pretty idiosyncratic. 

FB
Extremely. A lot of interpretations. You can think of it as a whimsical story or you can think of it as a horror story. 

MPM
It’s like we're terrified and infatuated with snakes because they're interesting, but they are scary. Alice is not a snake, but Alice is interesting because it is beautiful, mystical, and charming. Who doesn't want to shrink and meet the White Rabbit, right? But do you ever get out and do you ever return to your life? Then there's the whole layer of, “Was Alice really about drugs?”

FB
That came out of the 60s and 70s, for sure.

MPM
I do not doubt that some people come here because they're interested in that.

FB
Are there magic mushrooms in this garden?

MPM
All your listeners should not come here looking for mushrooms. People do eat a few before they arrive, I wouldn't be surprised. That part of it comes back when you're in your 20s or 30s. It's a generational thing. When you're a child, it's all beautiful imagery and you don't understand it, but you're enthralled. Then when you're older you’re thinking about it and you're not really sure what the meaning is. It's got a lot of depth to it, and that's part of the interest. 

FB
It always surprises me how much Alice is in culture. People forget when they say something like, “We've stepped into a looking glass, or we're down a rabbit hole now and there's no logic, and facts are not facts.” Alice keeps coming up in every conversation and people just don't realize this has all come from this original story.

MPM
Wasn't it Jefferson Airplane, “Go ask Alice, When she's 10 feet tall”? 

FB
I love that song.

MPM
You can't help but love that song. It’d be hard to figure out another book that has had that kind of an impact on us as humans. What about Wizard of Oz?

FB
Have you ever thought about doing The Wizard of Oz? That seems like a possibility.

MPM
I'll tell you the dream of ours. This is not a promise to your listeners, because we have a lot of work to do, but we would love to partner and do Where the Wild Things Are. The Maurice Sendak book is so important, so fanciful, so uplifting. He cared about literacy and children, which we care a lot about, we do a lot of reading programs in the garden. But also because Where the Wild Things Are would be such a good way to interpret the work that we do in Plant Conservation and Biodiversity. We have 35 scientists working in our Center for Plant Conservation doing work all over the southeastern United States, in the Caribbean, and worldwide to try to save magnolias in parts of the world like Asia and South America. But telling that story to guests is hard. Biodiversity and why we should care about plants is a hard concept for people to understand, because plants are everywhere, right? They're not going to be everywhere. They're disappearing and, as they go, so go the insects and the birds and the animals. If we could do Where the Wild Things Are, you'd have another story that has multiple stories to go with it, but that one hits squarely in the mission zone. That's our fantasy right now. We'd like to do that one day.

FB
That's a really strong choice. We'll put our collective energy towards that happening because people don't realize how many plants we're losing every year just as they don't realize the number of animal species we're losing. Obviously, those things go hand in hand. 

MPM
When we were little our parents would drive to Florida or California for vacation, every three or four hours we'd stop for gas, and my dad would get out and clean the windshield because of the bugs. When was the last time anybody had to clean bugs off a windshield? Where did the bugs go? If the bugs are gone, what are the birds eating? Well, let's see, 9 billion birds have disappeared. A lot all those things are pollinators for plants. So there go the plants. That's the simplest way to understand that web of life and the importance of biodiversity.

FB
It’s really important and it's great that you're doing this for children because it's their generation that's going to suffer. They're the young folks who need to really stand up for climate change and the difficulties we're facing. We just had a heat wave here and all these plants shriveled up so quickly. I hadn't seen that before in a matter of a couple of days. There are so many places on the planet where we're losing all of this diversity. 

MPM
Your sequoias are totally endangered. All those little plants, like little orchids in the rainforest that we're losing, it’s a big loss. And you're right, the kids are going to have to inherit the mess we leave behind.

FB
The important thing is, people can't take all that on, so you need to entertain and show them the beauty of what’s at stake. That's why I want to encourage people to go to the exhibit. If it's not this year, then go next year. There's so much creativity infused in this thing, the fairy tale aspect within the context of looking at these iconic characters and seeing the plants that make up the stylistic choices. It’s mind-blowing you can do this combination of the mosaic and the plants and create so much beauty. Then when you're looking at that beauty, someone's listening and you're talking about where these plants are disappearing. People can hear that because they're having it coming in. When I do school events and talk about my books, I spend so much time getting the kids on my side and I do not talk about writing and the difficulties of writing until the very end. So the teachers are happy with me but they're already on my side. So they can hear you, and that sounds like what you're doing.

MPM
That's so true. Years ago, we did some branding work and, as a part of that, we wanted to analyze whether we could lead with the environmental message. What we learned is that people care about that message but they don't come for that. They come for social experiences with family, friends, and loved ones. But once they're here, they want to understand more. They don't want to have it drilled into their head but they would like to learn more. That's what we can do with the magic of this show. 

We have the largest orchid center in the United States. There are orchids from a quarter of an inch big to eight feet big that are just spectacular with these incredible flowers and unique mechanisms for pollination. They're just as wonderful as the Mosaiculture Alice show. So we get you here for the bigger exhibit but then the experience is much deeper than that. 

When we talked a minute ago about what to do about all these challenges and biodiversity, I always like to lead people with this idea. I know you probably don't have a lot of lawns in California, right? But we certainly do here. But for people who have lawns, planting pollinator gardens and not spraying herbicides and pesticides, you can still have a lawn with a little bit of messy weeds in it if you mow it often and really encourage wildlife to come back and insects to thrive. That's something anybody who rents or owns a home can do that can make a big difference in the world we live in today. I want people to think about what they can do without feeling like we're just beating our heads against the wall and can't make a difference. We can in our own small way.

FB
It's really true. Last year, I got married in my backyard so I ended up planting and I put in a little water feature. To your point, I'm shocked by the number of butterflies and dragonflies showing up. Insects are all over the place and now the neighborhood raccoons, skunks, and deer are coming. I can really feel what you're talking about. It happened within a very short time, 12 months, but it has a lot to do with those instincts. 

Being president and CEO of the Atlanta Botanical Garden, what are some of the things you do day in and day out that excite you? What are the challenges of running this organization?

MPM
Number one, I love nature and I love plants so I get to run an organization that's driven by that. If I'm having a hard day or there's an issue, I can walk in the garden. Yesterday I went to see the Alice show and went to look at the orchids. You can't come back to your office feeling bad after you've done that. You just can't. The same is true for everybody else who's listening. If you can't walk through a botanical garden when you're having a hard day, just go for a walk in the park. Go for a walk in the woods. It lowers blood pressure, stress, and anxiety, and we know our children are suffering from that at huge levels. 

When gardens were started hundreds of years ago, some were started for wealthy manor houses in Europe. In fact, in the 1700s and 1800s, the really wealthy and royalty in England and other places would send orchid thieves to South America. That was where the orchid rape happened, and they stole them out of the out of the rainforest. If they took a million orchids on a ship back to England, they would be lucky if 100 survived. Terrariums were finally built so they could keep the orchids alive. So some gardens started with wealth. Some started as medicinal gardens, particularly monasteries that needed medicinal plants to help people heal. Then a lot of gardens started with universities as science collections, all of which are good, and many of those are still here today. 

But today, public gardens exist for lots of reasons, not just a narrow few. Forty-five years ago the big gardens would have lots of guests, but not all gardens have that. But because the world we're in today is disconnected from nature, and the globalization of our populations, we have more people coming to botanic gardens now than at any time in history. So this is our century. The bad news is that it means the environmental issues have gotten so severe that people do want to come for other reasons. But the good news is we're the havens for our community. That was proven in 2020 during Covid. People flocked here. We were the only cultural destination in Atlanta, along with the zoo, that was open. We had to limit numbers through the front door but we were the place where people came to preserve their sanity and feel safe. So I love that this is a time when gardens are thriving and more important than ever. 

I also love to raise money and build so we're in a $150 million capital campaign. We want to build another eight acres of gardens that will be connected to the ones we have now. But the real catalyst for this is that the new front door for these gardens is going to be on the Atlanta Beltline, which is a 22-mile connected loop around the city for walking, biking, and scooters that will be done in 2030. It's changing the way we move through our community. We are going to be the cultural destination on the Beltline. So my comparison is, that it's like the Whitney Museum in the High Line Park. We're going to be the Whitney on the Beltline. We're going to have one garden and two front doors. One for people arriving with cars and one for people on foot or biking. That is great in terms of looking at sustainability and how we get our guests here. We're very excited about that. I think we're right at about $120 million raised and we'll break ground next year.

FB
How do you go about raising that kind of money?

MPM
I love to raise money and I love America and its philanthropy. We are unique in the world in that our tax system was set up a long time ago to benefit people who wanted to support nonprofits and, as a result, we have some of the most successful nonprofits in the world. You look at Atlanta, where there is really no public funding, very little from the city and the count, and none from the state to speak of whereas other big cities like St. Louis, San Francisco, and New York, have public money for nonprofits and cultural institutions. We don't here but we have a vigorous, wonderful cultural community of museums and the garden and the Center for Puppetry Arts, which has the most famous puppets in the world. 

All of that is because of the generosity of this community and America's culture of philanthropy. So we have big foundations, generous individuals, and very generous corporations that support the work that we're doing. That's number one. Number two is to raise the kind of money that we're doing right now. It takes a bold vision. Everyone in this city knows how important the Atlanta Beltline is to changing the city. The first two miles that opened, eight or nine years ago, there was immediately $4-5 billion worth of development along it with apartments, condos, and restaurants. Our section will be the green section because it goes through Piedmont Park and then to the garden through a quiet part of the city and it connects neighborhoods. 

I think you have to have a bold vision that makes sense for the community. That it's more than the nonprofit. It's about, how you make Atlanta a better place to be for the people who visit here or live here. Then you have to deliver on the promise and those are really the key things in fundraising, at least in the cultural community. I think it's much harder in social services.

The BeltLine, to their credit, is doing a lot of work on affordable housing to make sure that it's not all these really expensive apartments and condos. I think private equity owns about 40% of the real estate in Atlanta and that's really driven up housing prices here and in every city in the United States. But the Belt is doing a really good job as is the city. We have a mayor who's all about affordable housing to try and turn that around. That's not our focus or our mission but we want to make sure because you have to pay admission to come into the garden or you can be a member. You could buy a dual membership for $120 and come in for free year-round. But we're also going to do free programming outside the enclosed area in a courtyard garden that we're building, where we can do Tai Chi, or we can talk about pollinator gardens. We can let people take an herb garden home to their little apartments. We want to do things that are about equity as well. 

FB
Here in Los Angeles, we have the Huntington Gardens. 

MPM

I love the Huntington. When I first saw the Cactus Garden as a young horticulturist, I think I cried. I was just so moved by it.

FB
To your point, certainly, during the pandemic, it was a safe place to socialize but I've also noticed that even on weekdays, when I would expect it to be quiet, I show up and the parking lot’s completely full. It’s such a spectacular garden but it's also just a place to get away and have a walk. I was recently reading the biography of Steve Jobs and he talks a lot about going on walks with friends or co-workers to talk through problems and to get away from it. That's the amazing thing about going on a walk and then if you're in nature, things come into your mind that you just don't expect because you're looking one way, you're thinking about something else, and then you see an animal, a plant, or a cactus. You're like, “Wait, where did all this come from?” 

MPM
When I go there, I never go inside. I just stay in the garden the entire time. It's so well maintained and so beautiful and so diverse but it's interesting when you were talking about taking a walk. I hope your listeners all know how walking out in nature can help you solve problems and de-stress, and we need to get our kids to do that more often, or just go play. But we forget that human beings are animals. We're an elevated animal and so being in nature, where we are hearing animals and smelling things, that's what we're supposed to do. That's what our bodies are craving. We've just forgotten that in our busy lives.

FB
If you combine that with Alice in Wonderland, you're combining nature and what it was like to have a childhood imagination and wonder, which is one of the things you were talking about earlier. So you’re bringing those things together, the wonder of story, the wonder of character, the wonder of whimsy and fantasy. Bringing it back to the Alice’s Wonderland Returns exhibit, can you bring us back to your exhibit and highlight some of the areas visitors really admire and talk to you about the feedback you're getting so we can have our little walk through our Alice in Wonderland on this podcast?

MPM
When you walk into the garden from the visitor center, immediately, there are two books and they are 18 feet tall. These are huge and they're made out of steel with fabric and soil and then they're completely planted. The letters are the only things that are metal. Everything else is a plant that makes the binding of the book and the front of the book, and that starts you off. Everyone wants their picture taken in front of that because when you go home with your photos and show them to your family, you begin with the story, which is Alice in Wonderland. 

Then you go into the show and you walk over where our restaurant, Longleaf, is, and when people are walking somebody inevitably will look up to the left, and on top of a stone wall when you're coming around a curve, is the Cheshire Cat. He's just up there looking down on you like he should be. It’s usually a child who finds it because they're always looking. Moms are talking, dads are talking, friends are talking, and then they all stop and they all have to have their pictures of it. Then you come to a water feature, which is at the end of a grand alley of crape myrtles, and in this water feature is Alice herself, and Alice is spinning because she's going down the rabbit hole.

FB
Oh, that's spectacular. And you have some teacups right near her as well, right?

MPM
There are two reasons for that. One is the reality of the book, you have to spin to go down the rabbit hole. The other is more practical. It's a 360-degree fountain. The reason is, that she's planted. There are trees here and sunshine on the other side. The plants all enjoy the sunshine in the shade. Otherwise, on one side of her, the all plants would get long and lanky in the shade and the sun is nice and tight and beautiful. So we had to turn her for photosynthesis. It's both the science and the art. 

Everyone stands and looks at her because the teacups are there and she's got cards on her and then she's falling down the rabbit hole. It's just so funny. I saw a Chinese couple there this spring when we had just put it in and they were so excited. Then you go over to the Red Queen, who is probably 20 feet tall and pretty intimidating as she's supposed to be. But what is she doing? Croquet. Remember what the croquet ball is? It’s the hedgehog.

FB
That's very clever. That's fun.

MPM
The hoop is one of the card soldiers. They have to bend to the Red Queen’s will so they have to bend over so they create a hoop for the hedgehog. Now you're just laughing. You're absolutely delighted. You're seeing details you never expected to see in the show. Of course, every moment is a photo op for family, friends, or whoever you're with. Then you go around another corner and you can hear music, or sometimes it's quiet, and the music doesn't come on until you trigger it, because it's triggered by movement. That's where the Singing Flowers are. They're 15 feet tall, and they're 12 of them, all along a linear pathway. They're singing this wonderful song to you like little cherubs and you're more mystified than anything. “Where did the music come from? What are these things?” It’s so delightful.

Then you end up in the Skyline Garden, which is wonderful because you've got this really beautiful urban view of Atlanta. You're above a huge water feature in a courtyard and looking down is the White Rabbit. The White Rabbit is about 25 feet tall and he is sitting in an umbrella, and he’s all white with a pink nose and whiskers. He's got his top hat on and there's a clock on him because he's always keeping time for when she has to leave. He is just awesome. I should note we keep the White Rabbit for the holiday light show so he gets lit up during the holidays. He is just a charming part of our holiday light show, which, last year, ABC News declared the best light show in America. We won the Light Fight competition. It's a fabulous light show. 

We have a canopy walk in our woodland and it's 45 feet off the ground with a 120 or 140-foot deciduous tree forest, we hang 1,500 light strands from nets in the trees, and they're all choreographed to music. It's fabulous. Then next to the White Rabbit on the lawn is the chess set you talked about and they're all the playing cards and the horses and the knights of the chess set. There's a great photo op in front of it and we have so many wonderful photos of families and children and friends together. People spend a lot of time there because there are so many pieces on the chess set. The lawn is a checkerboard lawn. It's a delightful show with the whimsy, the humor, and the delight from the book. And whenever you blow scale up like that, it's so surprising to people. They love it.

FB
I imagine these kids coming through. They're looking up and their necks are arching back, looking all around them at all these huge exhibits and characters. It's pretty remarkable.

MPM
I love it. Some of them come so many times. They lead people around because they know it so well.

FB
Having this conversation with you and you describing the exhibit was so compelling. It is very clear to me why you're the president and the CEO, and why you've raised $120 million of the $150 million. I want to get on a plane and come see that right now based on the way that you described it and the love, creativity, and care that is communicated through you in terms of the work that you're doing in this incredible exhibit. I really appreciate the time and your sharing your passion for Alice in Wonderland and this beautiful garden you oversee.

MPM
It's my pleasure, Frank. Come anytime you want. We'd love to have you. 

FB
So, let me just ask you a question, if you were to describe your husband as a character from Alice in Wonderland?

MPM
He can be really funny or kind of introverted when he wants and he's very creative sometimes. Right now, he works in the garden with the speaker tied to his waist to listen to the Braves games. Maybe he's the Mad Hatter.

FB
He'd have to be for being such a Renaissance person.

Thank you again. It was a terrific conversation. Thank you.

MPM
I enjoyed it so much, Frank. Thank you. 

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