Atlanta Botanical Garden’s holiday light show 'shines' brighter than ever

ATLANTA - How long did it take you to decorate your house for the holidays? An hour? Maybe two?

Well, the team at Atlanta Botanical Garden worked a little bit longer than that to create the 13th annual Garden Lights, Holiday Nights show. And 7,288 hours later, it’s time for visitors to stop in and enjoy the finished results!

This year’s Garden Lights, Holiday Nights opened for the season in November and runs through Jan. 14, blanketing Atlanta Botanical Garden with more than a million colorful lights and special holiday-themed installations. Although it’s the 13th year of the seasonal light show, there are some big new additions this time around — emphasis on the big. 

First-year features include a 144-foot-long "skynet" installed by artist Patrick Shearn of Poetic Kinetics (whom we interviewed back in 2021 during the "SUPERnatural: Aerial Art in Motion, Glass Art in Bloom" exhibition), metal deer and bird sculptures by French artist Cedric Le Borgne, and 11-foot-wide lighted butterflies hovering just under the treetops above Camellia Walk.

And, of course, there are strands of lights wrapped around just about every tree in sight; designers say the total length of all the light strings used in this year’s show is more than 60 miles, with more than 15,000 lights in the hair of the iconic Ice Goddess alone! And as if you needed any further evidence of just how special Garden Lights, Holiday Nights really is, the event was just featured on the television show "The Great Christmas Light Fight!"

Garden Lights, Holiday Nights is open nightly at Atlanta Botanical Garden from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. — admission varies by date, and more information on tickets is available here. And for a special look inside this year’s event, click the video player in this article!