This year’s Jungle Lights, McKee Botanical Garden’s glittering gift to the community, is bigger, brighter, and more exciting than ever before, thanks to the creative minds behind this not-to-be-missed annual event. In anticipation of next year’s centennial in honor of the Garden’s founding, and the 25th anniversary of its restoration and reopening, the past and present have been woven into this year’s theme. Welcome to an Amazon Adventure.
While thousands of lights continue to sparkle and shine on familiar sights of the season, it’s the sounds of the jungle that will captivate and whisk you away on a journey into six of the eight countries in the Amazon rainforest: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela, where macaws can be heard squawking, toucans purring, tree frogs singing, monkeys chattering, flamingos honking, and owls hooting.
It’s another world, and just how founders Waldo Sexton and Arthur McKee envisioned the garden would be a century ago when they sent plant explorers deep into the Amazon to search for, collect, and bring back exotic floral specimens that would be integrated into the tropical Florida hammock. The explorers succeeded, and thanks to well-known landscape architect William Lyman Phillips, the garden blossomed into a botanical wonderland that has been visited by hundreds of thousands of people over the years.
What makes Jungle Lights special? The answer is summed up nicely by Rochelle Wolberg, McKee’s executive director: “These dazzling nights are the only time visitors can experience this unique tropical oasis at night, when they may also capture and share beautiful memories of a rare and heartwarming sensory experience in nature.”
So, since seeing is believing, let’s take a mini tour starting at the entrance, where, just beyond a curved canopy covered with white lights, you’re greeted by a dazzling 30-foot-tall Christmas tree topped with an equally dazzling star.
Everywhere you look, LED lights define winding walkways, illuminate ponds, and outline fanciful figures. Bright orange fish frolic above foliage where iridescent green and purple figures sway back and forth. A larger-than-life blue, teal, and magenta peacock nestles nearby, and a regal reindeer outlined in white lights stands guard over a giant multicolored mushroom…