It’s night garden walking season (again)!

One of the (perhaps few) advantages of the calendar sliding into late fall and winter is the opening of night garden walking season. What do I mean here?

For some years now, I’ve been enjoying the evening lights and programming that local gardens (and even one cemetery!) orchestrate to attract visitors and offer alternative experiences for the months that the plants are on vacation.

Now it seems like this is going on everywhere. Zoos, botanical gardens, historic estates, outdoor shopping areas (and at least one cemetery near my house) are lighting up the darkness and luring us out of the warmth of our homes to venture out into the fall and winter nights. I wonder if the stringed lights companies are experiencing a surge in profits because of the trend.

Honestly, I think this is a good trend.

• It provides an excuse to go out and move around in a well-maintained space.
• It’s an opportunity for group friend outings and enjoying conversation while strolling and seeing pretty light exhibits.
• It offers evening novelty in a space that we might know well in the daytime (this is one of my favorite features of night garden walking).

Like night bike riding, I find night garden walking to pack an extra little thrill– I’m out and about at an unusual time. Because it’s dark, the environment looks different, which makes the experience of moving through it feel new in a way. Yes, it’s a low-key thrill, but a thrill nonetheless.

This year I plan to attend the Solstice light exhibit at Mount Auburn cemetery in December, and I hope to go to the Brookgreen Gardens Night of a Thousand Candles when I’m visiting my family in South Carolina.

Here’s a post I wrote about the Garden in the Woods Night of Illumination a couple of years ago. The pictures are fun, and maybe they will inspire you to head out to find of light-strewn bushes in your area of the woods.

Garden walking in the dark