Morgan “Bill” Evans was born on June 30, 1910, in Santa Monica, California. His first experience with gardening came from his father’s three-acre garden filled with exotic plants. In 1928, Bill joined the Merchant Marine and while he traveled the world aboard the S.S. President Harrison, he gathered exotic seeds for his father’s garden from distant lands, including the West Indies, South Africa, and Australia.
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In 1952, Bill Evans and his brother Jack were called to landscape the grounds of Walt Disney’s Holmby Hills home, including the gardens that surrounded his backyard railroad, the Carolwood Pacific. Walt was pleased with their work and asked them in 1954 to landscape the new theme park he was building called Disneyland.
“We landscaped all of Disneyland in less than a year with a maximum of arm-waving and a minimum of drawings,” laughed Bill. […]