“It’s really going to kind of surprise and delight people,” he says of the seasonal experience that the Garden has committed to hosting annually for at least five years.
#LIGHTSCAPE AT CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN INSTALL#
It took almost three weeks to install Lightscape by local talent who has worked on the Art Car Experience and touring shows at the Hobby Center.Īlthough Lightscape times with the winter holidays, very few of the lights are traditional holiday colors, Lacey points out. Other menu features include chicken tenders, curry fries, churro, tamales, beer and wine. S’mores kits are available for purchase, and options range beyond the basic ingredients to pumpkin spice marshmallows and pieces of dark chocolate served with strawberry. Popular holiday music plays throughout the show. Lacey predicts an average visit will last 1.5 hours. Once families have used their timed-entry ticket, they can stay as long as they wish. One area has sculptures that mimic stars and constellations.Īt an impressive 35 feet tall, the Winter Wonderland Tree is another dramatic photo op along the way. Some will stop in their tracks at the Fire Garden, formed of 228 individually-staked, blazing candles that glow nightly. Kids will enjoy running back and forth inside, Lacey predicts.įrom there they might race to illuminated features with names such as Electric Forest, Starfield and Lightwater Valley. As guests walk below the arched canopy of 100,000 individual LED lights, the ceiling tapers, giving visitors the impression that they are being pulled into a light tunnel. Elsewhere, “the light will kind of follow you.”Ĭertain to be Instagrammable, the 70-foot-long Winter Cathedral in the center of the show reaches 19 feet at its highest point. Some glowing features have a way of enveloping you as you walk through the feature gardens, Lacey says.
There is light technology that interacts with visitors and piercing parallel neon strings that twist and turn on one another. Gobos shaped like snowflakes dance on the ground. Lasers cut through mature vegetation along the edge of the bayou. VIP tickets include flexible entry and on-site parking hbg.orgĪlong the trail, soft uplighting causes a canopy of banana trees to glow. Parking is not included in general admission. Where: Houston Botanic Garden, 1 Botanic Laneĭetails: Tickets starting at $23 for adults and $16 for children. Lacey says his team hopes the new seasonal installation will attract first-time visitors to “see the natural beauty of the garden in a really special way.” 8-mile illuminated trail, the display accentuates the existing vegetation of the site, “presenting it in a really dramatic way,” Lacey says.Įncompassing 132 acres along Sims Bayou, Houston Botanic Garden opened in the fall of 2020. Like other site-specific features along the. arts collective that conceived of them, are inspired by lotus flowers found in the property's aquatic displays. In Houston, the field of Jigantics, named for the U.K. A play on the word “landscape,” the installation has illuminated the natural ecosystem in the Los Angeles County Arboretum, the Chicago Botanic Garden and London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. That’s the intent of Lightscape, a traveling, after-dark light show that opens at the Houston Botanic Garden this weekend. Made of durable polyester, the massive petals attached to larger-than-life stems “move with the wind and wilt in the rain like real flowers,” says Justin Lacey of the Houston Botanic Garden. Proudly standing 20 feet tall, the brightly-hued Jigantics Flowers - a showstopper at Houston Botanic Garden’s new “Lightscape” installation - are dazzling both in the daytime and at night. Flowers by Jigantics, Lightscape Photo: Jim Vond Ruska © Sony Music