SAN FRANCISCO — A new nighttime holiday show featuring music, flowers and more than a million twinkling lights in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park is delighting kids and adults alike.
The mile-long (1.6-kilometer) lighted trail at the city Botanical Garden features towering peonies and fields of lights. Artists have created whimsical water lilies and giant dragonflies, and a strawberry tree in the Canary Islands has been turned into a neon tree.
“Some of my favorite comments were from the kids: just hearing how they were feeling, the happiness and the joy,” said Sarah Marsh of the Gardens of Golden Gate Park, which manages the Botanical Garden.
“And honestly,” she said, “it’s the looks on their faces when they see the lights and experience the trail itself.”
Spectacular recreational trails called Lightscape exist in sister gardens in Chicago, Brooklyn and London, but this is the first of its kind in San Francisco. Sony Music and UK-based production management company Culture Creative are working with each location to create a garden-specific holiday trail.
The San Francisco light show, which ends Jan. 4, drew sold-out crowds. It has already attracted 100,000 visitors, Marsh said, with some visitors eager to return during the day to see the plants that dazzled them at night.
“We hope to spark curiosity,” she said.
