Happy holidays, GPODers!
The holidays often bring to mind the many activities that take place outside the garden: family dinners, gift shopping, and holiday parties. But even as the temperatures drop, there are plenty of outdoor activities to enjoy. This might include marveling at the dazzling displays of lights and decorations in front of your neighbours’ homes or in parks and gardens. Today, in honor of this week’s festivities, we look at Cleo Raulerson’s submission for the Bellevue Botanical Garden’s annual Garden of Lights in Washington state.
You may recognize her name from an inspiring tour Cleo takes in her back garden in the autumn (in Cleo’s back garden in late October). She is actually a volunteer at Bellevue and helps put on this wonderful show every year. She provides more details below.
Garden d’Lights features more than 500,000 sparkling lights forming bizarre shapes of plants, flowers, birds, animals and waterfalls, set amid the natural beauty of the Bellevue Botanical Gardens. Now in our 30th year, we expect around 70,000 visitors over the 31 nights of events. (Tickets must be purchased online, tickets are not sold at the door)
As a volunteer, I lead a dedicated team of volunteers (totaling over 6,400 hours per year) who have overall responsibility for the design, construction, installation and maintenance of the Garden d’Lights lighting structures. The designs are all created by our volunteers and we aim to create the essence of the plants, although we are creative with the sizes and our displays are based on color rather than which plants grow together or what time of year the plants are. Flowering time.
A clematis-covered trellis with sunflowers planted behind it was set up as a photo arch for selfies, and there were many colorful flowers on the other side of the path.
Pink and yellow lupins, with white vines in front and blue and white alliums behind, butterflies fluttering overhead, are planted in our urban lawns.
A white mushroom at the base of a “real” cedar tree has bells in front, and blue and white delphiniums stand majestically behind it.
A river flows between pink and white foxgloves, with skunk cabbage in front and dragonflies flying overhead.
A willow tree is the focal point of many colorful flowers on a “real” lawn. Back row: Umbrella plant, cattail, coneflower, delphinium. Third row: white alliums, cherry trees, blue irises. Second row: pink and white agapanthus. First row: hyacinth.
The corn in our garden is guarded by a scarecrow.
Green frogs on lotus leaves surrounded by water lilies, above our ‘real’ cistern with red lobelia in front, ‘real’ rock garden illuminated by colored floodlights.
Two blue herons in front of the cat’s tail.
Our flower stands tell visitors the names of some of our flowers so they can find their enjoyment in the display.
Thank you so much for capturing and sharing these incredible displays, Cleo! I’ve seen some cool light displays, but I was impressed with how the bulbs were manipulated and looked like glowing petals and leaves. The Bellevue Botanical Garden’s light show runs through December 31st, so if you’re in the Seattle area you should definitely make time before the end of the year to see these stunning creations.
I hope all GPOD readers had a wonderful holiday season. Whatever you observe or what your celebrations look like (even if there aren’t many at all), I hope this is a restorative time to end the year and prepare for the new year ahead.
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