Desert Botanical Gardens & Chihuly Exhibit

The Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix is truly one of the city’s most coveted treasures. I’ve featured photos from there on this blog before and I’m sure there will be more photos to come. The gardens are always changing and there literally hundreds of special programs sponsored by the gardens and attended by hundreds of thousands of people. During the holiday season each year, the garden opens its gates on several evenings for an event called “las noches de las luminarias” (the nights of the lights). During that event, the garden pathways are lit by traditional “luminarias” and the plants are highlighted with special lighting. This year the event was magnified by the garden’s most ambitious exhibit to date, the “Chihuly: the nature of glass” exhibit. I was lucky to attend one of these evening openings and found not only the illuminated pathways but, the fabulous Chihuly glass works shimmering with eye-popping beauty and radiance. The photo above is just one of the breathtaking installations, a life size desert plant made all of glass. Dale Chihuly has done garden installations before in cities like Chicago, Atlanta, London, St. Louis and Pittsburg. However, this is his first exhibit in an outdoor garden setting. Tomorrow I’ll show you a collage of some of the other pieces that were glowing that night.