While so much of the plan for Great Adventure was larger than life, one section of the Enchanted Forest was designed to make the guests feel larger than life with an entire village of miniature buildings, cars, boats, trains and people. Though the scale of the attractions parts was small, the site that Garden of Marvels was one of the largest of any attraction in the park. Careful planning created the landscape that would be home to castles and villages complete with roads and waterways and even a mountain range. Earth work was the first phase of the project, creating the waterways and ponds.
While ground preparation work continued in the park, a testing layout for the G-scale LGB trains was constructed near the assembly building for the Garden of Marvels.  The layout allowed the workers to evaluate different types of roadbeds as well as engine pulling power and traction on the inclined railways.
	On site a small prototype pond was poured to see which shade of paint would look best underwater to create the many ponds and steams that would be found throughout the miniature village.
To control the lights in the buildings, the motion of the vehicles, and the operation of the G-scale trains throughout the Garden of Marvels, power lines were laid beneath the soil leading from a control room. The control room was a concrete bunker which was built as the base of the mountain range.
	With the concrete portion of the control room in place, earthen berms were built on each side creating ramps up and down over the top of the building. The ramps would serve as the walkway out of the Garden of Marvels and back into the rest of the theme park.
	While the construction of the Garden of Marvels site was taking place, sculptors and model makers were hard at work on the displays that would be installed. Some of the model buildings had been built prior to the construction of the park and had been displayed in Europe. The master builder of the model buildings was Arthur Thuijs of the Netherlands, who had built villages of models castles for display in his parks.
Hours of work went into the highly detailed models. The craftsmen built every car, boat and building by hand.
	Large boards of pathways and parks were constructed to create the environments for the palaces and castles complete with trees and people.
The mountain range built atop the berm and control room was constructed with a plywood outline and fleshed out with a wooden framework. The wood structure was the base for a wire mesh covering which was then covered with a thick layer of stucco to make them solid "rock". As the park's July 1st opening day drew near, the models were installed and the landscaping was added to set the scene. The little details made the Garden of Marvels an attraction like no other.
	After the initial construction of the Garden of Marvels, additional models and scenes were planned, and one of the elements to make it off the drawing board was a replica of the carvings of Mount Rushmore. The iconic images of Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt and Lincoln were sculpted in a studio but not added to the Garden's mountain range until the 1979 season.