The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh will sprinkle a generous dusting of cheer and wonder once again this year.
One of Edinburgh’s most popular festive season events, Christmas at The Botanics, returns for its third consecutive year running for 30 nights from 22 November to 29 December.
Enjoyed by visitors in their thousands last year, the highly anticipated return of this after-dark festive extravaganza will see the Garden transformed with several new awe-inspiring attractions for guests to enjoy.
The one mile long illuminated trail will feature a host of installations for visitors to interact with, including weaving through dancing laser beams and theatrical fog in the Laser Garden, and navigating their way through a forest of larger-than-life icicles and neon spiral trees.
Also new for this year is Voyage, where guests can enjoy moments of waterside reflection as hundreds of floating origami boats bob on the Garden’s Pond, creating ever-changing lighting effects.
The bobbing boats
Festive favourite, the Tunnel of Light, which wowed visitors with its 70m long archway in 2018, will return as well as the Fire Garden, which showcases an exciting mixture of fire and light to create a unique, sensory experience.
Visitors can conclude their winter wonderland journey by taking part in Light Hearted, a playful interactive sculpture which lights up when two people hold hands, before enjoying the ‘Festive Finale’ at Inverleith House, which centres around colourful projections that play in time to much-loved Christmas classics.
Over 75,000 visitors attended Christmas at the Botanics in 2018 attracting audiences from as far as Germany, Japan and Australia.
Simon Milne MBE, Regius Keeper at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, said: ‘By coming to our event, visitors are helping us enormously to fund plant research and conservation. Profits from the trail go to help finance our important work around the world.
The light spectacular will appeal to everyone
‘For example, we work in more than 50 countries as part of the International Conifer Conservation Programme. During our festive trail, the only conifers we may be thinking about are Christmas trees but it is worth remembering that, of the world’s 615 conifer species, one third are listed as endangered. We are at the heart of efforts to save plants such as these.’
Jonathan Marks, chief development director at Raymond Gubbay, a division of Sony Music, which promotes the event, said: ‘Edinburgh has welcomed the event with open arms and fully embraced the magic surrounding a lightshow at this time of year. By introducing new installations again this year, we are ensuring that the event stays current and unique for people to come back time and time again and enjoy the beautiful landscape of the Botanics.’
Tickets for this year’s show are currently on sale. For further ticket information, pricing and timings, visit https://www.rbge.org.uk/whats-on/christmas-at-the-botanics-2019/
Christmas at the Botanics is one of seven illuminated trails brought to you by leading events promoter Raymond Gubbay Limited, a division of Sony Music, in partnership with the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh and creative producer Culture Creative.
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