A Kentucky company that creates botanical garden railway empires full of familiar landmarks keeps on chugging on under a new family leader.
Alexandria-based Applied Imagination, founded 30 years ago by Paul Busse, is now under the leadership of his daughter Laura Busse Dolan. She is now the company's president and CEO. Botanical gardens around the U.S. employ the company to create displays that are almost entirely made out leaves, acorns, seedpods, twigs and branches.
The company employs people with titles like botanical architects who, for example, built 200 miniature buildings for the New York Botanical Gardens annual display including a mini Brooklyn Bridge out of wood and stone that spans a walkway above people's heads.
New York and Cincinnati's Krohn Conservatory are two of the longest-running Applied Imagination displays.
A display at the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina has an 11-foot model of the mansion, Busse Dolan said.
"You can stand back from it and easily not realize it’s made out of natural materials," she said.
The former marketing brand manager had always stayed close to the family business. She said her father sat her down in 2017 to ask if she would change careers. He has had Parkinson's disease for 10 years. For a while, her brother Brian took over the company until leaving to pursue another career.
Busse Dolan said her dad passed on his love of trains to her.
"I guess I’ve always been a daddy’s girl," she said. "We're buddies.""She still goes to the man who took her on weekend morning rides to watch trains for input on projects.
Busse Dolan worked as a side job constructing buildings and learning from her dad all about G scale locomotives.
"Having to run these installations you really need to know everything you need to know about model trains," she said.
The U.S. Botanical Garden and Glenwood Gardens in Woodlawn are two others of the more than dozen Applied Imagination displays.
The American Society of Landscape Architects awarded Paul Busse a gold medal of excellence award in December for his work creating his imaginative botanical displays.
"It's sort of like a lifetime achievement award," she said.
That work will continue, Busse Dolan said. So far, all the displays are in the U.S.
"We’ve been approached by several different places outside of the U.S., but who knows we may be in Japan next year," she said.
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