Glow

Royal Horticultural Society Gardens at Wisley (Surrey) is a place I have wanted to visit for years.  It had not been on my list of things to do in a jam-packed week before Christmas.

Somehow it was brought to our attention that that they have lit up the winter gardenscape to be enjoyed after dark in the weeks of the festive season.

Mr B very kindly booked us two tickets to go on Monday evening.  I know it is a school night, and Wisley is about a 45 minute drive away from home, but it turned out to be the best Monday night, Christmas lights, spectacular, wonderland, better than fireworks, experience ever.

It is also very serene and the perfect antidote to the stressful pressurized side of the season of madness.  I would like to say the perfect antidote to commercialism but to be fair it is not free to get in and once in there are plenty of places to drop a few more pounds (cash) on the sorts of things that pile on the pounds (flesh), but leaving those behind you can stroll off into a scene from a winterland ballet (complete with subtle music), where the fine, the fabulous, the magnificent, and the delicate forms of trees and shrubs are highlighted (or uplighted) with cleverly placed coloured lights.

My photos possibly show it to be rather garish but to the eye rather than the digital recorder the scene is more delicate, like frost on branches, like glow worms in caves, like bioluminescence in seawater.  The colours are neon but nature has provided the forms and it is magical.

From ballet to techno - we walked through a tropical hothouse and out into a moving light display with more beat and urgency.  At first I felt disappointed and slightly resentful that it had intruded on the feeling but was quickly entranced by the patterns the lights were making on the low cloud, murmuration's of white starlings, dancing lines, a springing spider...

Candles lit up the alpine meadow in the next zone we crossed - small scrubby bushes with tortured branches dotted the landscape and hid speakers filling the air with a kind of Celtic faerie music, a beautiful sound full of delicacy and wistfulness, an invitation to step beyond the mundane world....

At the end a Viennese waltz enticed a fountain to perform in swirls, loops, leaping jets cut at the bottom hanging in air, splashes and crashes timed to perfection and punctuated by short bursts of flame!!!

If you live close enough check it out - a great way to spend an evening up to 2 January.  We were lucky the weather provided low cloud (which enhanced the moving part of the light show) but was dry and mild with very little breeze.

Link to RHS Glow Website