HomeCharities & FundraisersDescanso Gardens Announces 'Enchanted: Forest of Light'

Descanso Gardens Announces ‘Enchanted: Forest of Light’

Descanso Gardens is hoping to enchant guests with a new interactive light show for the 2016 holiday season.

The one-mile evening walk through the La Cañada Flintridge gardens titled, “Enchanted: Forest of Light” at Descanso Gardens was recently announced to members.

“It really celebrates who we are,” Descanso Gardens Chief Operating Officer Juliann Rooke said. “It highlights how beautiful we are and it highlights the trees here at Descanso Gardens.”

Descanso Gardens’ leadership began thinking about hosting its own event after seeing the success of “Rise of the Jack O’Lanterns,” held in Descanso’s Rose Garden for the past two years.

Rooke said Descanso Gardens received more than 100,000 visitors for “Rise of the Jack O’Lanterns” over a four-week period this past fall, noting that it’s almost as many people who come during the daytime for an entire year.

“We also grew our membership base in an unbelievable fashion,” she said. “We didn’t just increase members and never see them again. They actually came back again and again.”

Rooke said even though the event was positive for Descanso Gardens, it did have its downfalls because Descanso had to close its Rose Garden to the public for two months.

Borrowing a page from the Morton Arboretum in Chicago, which served as inspiration for “Enchanted,” the new event will be produced by Descanso rather than an outside organization.

“What that means it that we get to control all the content,” Rooke said, adding that Descanso will be able to reap more of the benefits of doing an event.

Rooke also said that Descanso will not have to close any gardens, nor set up any intrusive equipment for the new holiday event, which will make for an improved daytime visitor experience.

Executive Director David Brown said “Enchanted” will be a wonderful growth opportunity for Descanso Gardens.

The walk will start at the Center Circle, which will be lit with white lights. The lower promenade will be aglow with a rainbow of lights in a display called “Flower Power.”

“When you walk along the flowers, they change colors,” Rooke said. “Then you continue up the promenade to the Rainbow Sycamores. There are five very large Sycamore trees at the top of the promenade. This is the first real fully interactive part of the show.”

She said the trees will light up when someone moves by them because of motion detectors. The illuminated Rose Garden Stroll will take guests from the promenade to the lake. The plans for the lake during “Enchanted” have yet to be finalized. The Oak Forest will be transformed into a “Symphony of Oaks” where sensors on the trees will enable them to become illuminated and make sounds. The Camellia Forest will be lit in two ways, with the flowers themselves highlighted in red and the oak canopies in blue. The walk will then bring visitors to the Main Lawn, which will have an area for children to walk and illuminated benches for people to rest. Here, children will be able to jump on an interactive lighted Lily Pad Pool and there will be trees that are mapped.

Brown spoke about how the Ancient Forest will be transformed for “Enchanted.”

“The designers here are going to do the same thing that we did, which is design a great experience using only shades of green,” he said. “The way they are going to do that is using different colors of lights to illustrate the main progression of plants’ emergence on the planet.”

There will also be theatrical fog and music.

Guests will next venture to the Japanese Garden, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year at Descanso. 

Planned lighting of the Japanese Garden for “Enchanted.”

“The trees, the canopies and the buildings are going to be lit in blue,” Brown said. This will be punctuated by thousands of hanging red lanterns.

“The experience that you have there will be both serene and extremely exciting,” Brown said.

He said the very large and old Oak Trees at Descanso Gardens would be “the perpetual stunners of the show” as they will be individually lit.

Patina Restaurant Group, which operates Descanso Café, will have restaurant-style food service for the duration of “Enchanted.”

“Enchanted” will run for 43 nights beginning the day after Thanksgiving and closing Jan. 8. Hours are expected to be from 5-10 p.m. on the weekends with slightly abbreviated hours on the weekdays. Event tickets will be timed for every 30 minutes and will cost $28.00 for adults, with discounts for members and children. Ticket sales will begin on Aug. 1 for members and Sept. 1 for non-members.

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