A Garden of Light
June 12th, 2012
It takes a lot to astound me these days, but Longwood Gardens’ new “Light” exhibit that opened over the weekend did the trick.
One of the light displays in Longwood Gardens' new attraction.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
The sheer volume of lights spread in eight displays over 23 acres is mind-boggling enough. But the artful arrangement and the life-like way the fiber-optic-lit glass globes change color makes this whole show unlike anything done anywhere.
It’s the first show of its kind in the U.S., and it’ll only be at Longwood through Sept. 29. Then it comes down.
I’d highly recommend blocking out an evening to see it. Given that the main attraction is colorful lighting, this is one garden show that really needs to be seen at night.
Longwood is staying open until 11 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays until Sept. 1 so people can linger well after the skies darken.
The staff is anticipating large crowds, so timed tickets are required. Order them online at www.longwoodgardens.org or call ahead to 610-388-1000. Adult admission is $18.
The light show is the work of innovative British artist Bruce Munro. Longwood staff saw one of his light fields in England and recruited him to do his biggest project ever — eight different displays — in Longwood’s 1,077-acre venue.
I’ll attempt to describe it briefly, but you’ll get a better flavor by seeing pictures. I posted a photo gallery of 16 of them here: https://georgeweigel.net/photo-galleries?album=6&gallery=17.
My favorite display is called “Forest of Light.” You walk into a wooded path and encounter an understory literally aglow in 20,000 glass balls of color-changing light. Each tennis-ball-sized crystal sits on the tip of a glass stem, looking a bit like glassy alliums.
Longwood's "Forest of Light."
Fiber optic lights inside each ball pulsate as they fold from one color to the next, almost as if the things are living, breathing alien colonies.
My second favorite is “Field of Light,” another collection of color-changing, lighted glass spheres, only these are set in a tree-backdropped meadow. The lights here remind you of wildflowers. They seem to be more “broadcast” than “installed.”
Also very cool is “Water Towers” — 69 lighted structures that look like barrels spread out across an open field. The towers are actually seven-layer stacks of 1-liter, water-filled bottles — 17,388 in all. These glow and change color to music.
The only one of the eight displays best seen in daylight is the “Waterlilies” exhibit on the Large Lake near the Italian Water Garden. This one features 65,000 recycled CDs secured to 6- and 8-foot foam discs floating on the water — reminiscent of Longwood’s famed waterlily platters.
Two indoor conservatory exhibits are equally impressive.
The "Light Shower" in Longwood's conservatory.
One is a series of six huge chandeliers, each made out of 127 hand-blown glass spheres about the size of softballs. Dubbed “Snowballs,” the chandeliers hang from the conservatory’s glass ceiling and change color in unison.
The other is “Light Shower,” and it consists of sheets of teardrop-shaped crystals hanging from the ceiling atop a flooded marble floor.
Amazing.
As Longwood’s director, Paul Redman, has been saying, “This will let people see the Gardens in a way they’ve never seen them before. The most amazing, ground-breaking thing is that we’ve actually created a new garden type — a garden of illumination.”