Happy Holidays, GPODers!
The holidays often bring to mind many activities that happen outside of the garden: Big family meals, shopping for gifts, and attending holiday parties. But there are also so many activities to enjoy outdoors, even when the temperatures drop. This can include marveling at dazzling light and decoration displays in front of your neighbor’s homes or at public parks and gardens. Today, to celebrate this week of festivities, we’re enjoying a submission from Cleo Raulerson of the annual Garden d’Lights at Bellevue Botanical Garden in Bellevue, Washington.
You might recognize Cleo’s name from the inspiring tour she did of her back garden in fall (Late October in Cleo’s Back Garden). She is actually a volunteer at Bellevue and helps to put this spectacular show on every year. She gives more details below.
Garden d’Lights features over half a million sparkling lights formed into the whimsical shapes of plants, flowers, birds, animals, and cascading waterfalls set amid the natural beauty of the Bellevue Botanical Garden. This is our 30th year and we expect about 70,000 visitors to attend over the 31 nights of the event. (Tickets must be purchased online at https://bellevuebotanical.org/garden-dlights. Tickets are not sold at the gate)
As a volunteer, I lead a dedicated group of volunteers (6,400+ hours total annually) who are fully responsible for the design, build, installation and maintenance of the light structures for Garden d’Lights. The designs are all created by our volunteers and our goal is to create the essence of the plant, although we are creative on the size and our displays are based on colors, not which plants grow together or time of year that a plant blooms.
A clematis-covered trellis with sunflowers behind it set up as a photo arch for selfies, and many colorful flowers on the other side of the path.
White liatris in front of pink and yellow lupine with blue and white alliums further back, and butterflies flying overhead, planted in our Urban Meadow.
Bells in front of white mushrooms at base of a ‘real’ cedar tree with blue & white delphiniums standing stately at the back.
A river running between pink and white foxgloves with skunk cabbage in the front and dragonflies flying overhead.
A willow tree is the focal point for many colorful flowers on the ‘real’ lawn. Back row: Umbrella plant, cat tails, coneflowers, delphiniums. Third row: White allium, cherry tree, blue iris. Second row: Pink and white agapanthus. First row: Hyacinth.
Corn guarded by a scarecrow in our vegetable garden.
Green frog on lily pads surrounded by water lilies over our ‘real’ water retention pond with cardinal lobelia in the front and the ‘real’ rock garden lit up with colored flood lights.
Two blue heron in front of cat tails.
Our flower stand which tells visitors the names of some of our flowers so that they can have fun finding them in the display.
Thank you so much for capturing and sharing these incredible displays, Cleo! I’ve seen my share of cool light displays, but I’m utterly impressed by the way the bulbs have been manipulated to look exactly like glowing petals and leaves. The light displays will remain up at Bellevue Botanical Garden until December 31st, so if you’re in the Seattle area you should absolutely find the time to see these amazing creations before the year ends.
And I hope all GPOD readers are having a fabulous holiday season. No matter what you observe or what your celebrations looks like (even if there isn’t much celebrating at all), I hope it’s a restorative time to wind down the year and prepare for the new year ahead.
Have a garden you’d like to share?
Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!
To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.
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