Alberto Borjas "Plants" Fanciful Easter Garden at Mall

A magical garden began to bloom last week with flowers and fresh-faced vegetables, butterflies, dragonflies, friendly bees and even a large purple and citrus-green snail. This week frogs, baby chicks and bunnies—lots of bunnies—moved in.

This particular garden, full of purple and yellow and Easter-egg bright colors, is immune to the weather. It’s inside.

It’s the work of Alberto Borjas.

For much of the year, Borjas, who lives in Woburn, is a maintenance man at the .

But at Easter (and Christmas) he takes on a second role. He’s like a set designer who stages holiday displays in the mall. The Easter Bunny (and Father Christmas) take up residence in Borjas’ landscapes.

Beyond creating the scenes, especially the Easter garden, which he has varied for the past eight years, Borjas hand-makes many of the props, or modifies store-bought items. He hand-glued the “bark” on the large, tall trees as well as the eggs on the roof of the houses. It took six months, part-time, to do a tree, he said. He added reflective sparkles this year to the toadstools.

He even recycles. Some of the “stuffing” in the giant carrots comes from a shoe store in the mall.

As a final touch, he has arranged 1,000 flowers around the perimeter of the garden.

As he worked last week, people—adults, as well as children—stopped to look, stare and point at his work-in-progress. There are no other displays like it, he said.

Borjas came to the United States 10 years ago, from Costa Rica, where he attended art school about 20 years ago. He worked for a time in a hotel kitchen, making the garnishes that decorate diners’ plates. He moved to Woburn when he came here.

He has an eye for design and detail.

"I’m very picky,” he said. “I try to make it look real.” He incorporates natural materials, like real rocks, to help achieve that effect, with a touch of fantasy.

Every year the Easter garden is different, he said.

“I don’t want to do the same as the past year.”

So he’s pleased when people notice new things and say, “I didn’t see that last year.”

When people ask why he takes so much time on the displays, he said, “I like to do this for the kids.”

He gave the same answer to explain why he patiently added faces to many of the vegetables and border flowers:  “For the kids to see something different.”

It takes Borjas about two weeks, part-time, to “plant” the Easter garden, to actually arrange the various parts of the scene.

He adds lights, too.

Look carefully at the “plants” and the animals. Count how many are wearing glasses and sunglasses. Did you spot the quartet of bunnies sitting on upside-down flower pots at a table, each with a cell phone and the bunny pushing a stroller full of baby bunnies?

Then look up. Borjas hung decorative watering cans and flowery “hot air balloons” high above the scene.

Flower leaves flutter, as if blown by a breeze. It’s really the mall’s heat and air conditioning system, he said.

The live Easter Bunny will sit in a spot based on where the sun shines this time of year, Borjas pointed out.

To the children who want to explore the garden too closely, Borjas said he tells them, “Once you get in, the magic is lost.”

Borjas and his wife have two children of their own. They are now 20 and 18 years old. When he sets up the Easter scene at the mall, they come by, he said, and point out what’s different from last year.

They also have two cats. While he loves to decorate at home, the cats pose a challenge, he said. They played havoc, he said, with the faux snow around a display of ceramic houses in his dining room.

He does decorate at home for Christmas, but not for Easter. In his native country, Easter is a religious holiday, he said.

Borjas’ second career took root when, he said, he started to work at the mall. The person in charge of the seasonal displays took pieces out of storage, he said, and set them up the same way they had been arranged the year before. Borjas got the job.

The Easter garden will grow until several days after Easter. Then pieces will have to be wrapped, boxed and stored. The boxes are carefully labeled, Borjas noted. As soon as they go away, Borjas said he will begin to think about his Christmas display, and—even though the setting is more traditional—how he can modify it to make it different from last year.

The Easter Bunny will be at the mall from Saturday, April 9, through Saturday, April 23, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. for pictures, and on Sundays from noon to 2 p.m. and 3 to 6 p.m.