The Desert Botanical Garden is a magical place anytime of the week, but here at night during the holidays, it is alive with lights.
“You know it's great, because the garden is so different at night time compared to the day, so we have a lot of our regular guests come through, they're excited about the plants, but then they come to Luminaria for the first time at night and they just can't believe it's the same place,” Tina Wilson with the Desert Botanical Garden said.
“The luminaria is a southwest tradition, and when the garden decided that we wanted to celebrate that tradition, we put it together, we started with actual paper bags and hand lighting everything, and then as we've moved on and we've grown, we decided we needed to do something a little different, so we've put plastic bags out but everything is still hand lit, and it's just one of those things that represents the southwest and who we are and it's really for the community to celebrate.”
About 8,000 hand-lit luminarias create a soft, warm glow around this 140 acres of Sonoran desert. So I just want to say "viva las noches de la luminarias!"
“It's one of our biggest events of the year, and it's one of our most favorite. We host about 3000 people every night,” Wilson said. “So, I love walking past our visitors and guests and they just go, ‘I can't believe this is the same place, it's just amazing, how did they do this? This is wonderful, we need to come back!’”
This is the 38th year of the Luminaria at the Botanical garden from Thanksgiving to December, it's an experience that can only be described as…
“Magical! It's one of those things that you actually have to experience and walk through and be immersed in it, because it's just hard to describe, yeah we light 8000 luminaria bags, and you put them along the trails, but to actually be here and to hear the music and to have the atmosphere, you would need to have to actually be here and walk through it,” Wilson said, “it's absolutely magical.”
