Pictured: The Bromeliad Tree is a favorite in the Lights in Bloom Show. Photo by Cliff Roles.

This holiday season, head down to Marie Selby Botanical Gardens’ downtown Sarasota campus to check out their annual holiday lights show, Lights in Bloom. The show, which is on during select nights through January 5th, features more than two million lights illuminating the gardens and walkways and is a repeat winner in the USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice contest for Best Botanical Garden Holiday Lights. “Lights in Bloom is just a beautiful way to see our bayfront sanctuary in a completely new way during these winter evenings,” says Greg Luberecki, Selby Gardens’ Vice President of Strategic Communications. “For the past 19 years, it’s become a wonderful holiday tradition in the Sarasota region. We have multiple generations of families that come back year after year and every year the lighting designers (Affairs in the Air) not only outdo themselves by coming up with new displays but also repeat the old favorites that repeat visitors love to see. It’s also a way that new guests get to learn about Selby Gardens.

Some of the new attractions include the transformation of the historic Selby mansion into a gingerbread house as well as a unique photo opportunity in the butterfly garden. “The lighting designers added lights and decorations to make the house look like a gingerbread house but with a little bit of a tropical twist. Additionally, the butterfly garden has a new photo opportunity with giant butterfly wings – they almost look like stained glass lit up within the frame of a giant butterfly,” says Luberecki. “Another new touch is a string light tree by the bay front where visitors are encouraged to step inside and get a picture under the sparkling lights.”

One of the returning old favorites is the Bromeliad Tree, which stands at over 20 feet tall and is constructed of nearly 800 individual colorful plants. “You can see the Bromeliad Tree in natural light and then when it's lit up at night it’s absolutely stunning – it’s constructed of three separate pieces – the horticulture team uses heavy equipment to stack each piece on top of one another once they are all decorated,” says Luberecki. “Bromeliads are one of the signature plants that are displayed and studied here at Selby and the Bromeliad Tree is really where the horticulture team gets to flex their creativity and challenge themselves to come up with a new design.”

Selby Gardens Downtown Sarasota Campus, 1534 Mound Street, Sarasota, 941-366-5731.

Pictured: The Bromeliad Tree is a favorite in the Lights in Bloom Show. Photo by Cliff Roles.

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