BOOTHBAY, Maine — As the sun dipped below the horizon on a mid-November afternoon, the sky was streaked with pinks, lavenders and oranges — all the colors of a late-fall sunset in Maine.
But as the vibrant sky slowly faded into dusk, other colors began to emerge from the trees, plants and structures of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Since early September, staff at the gardens have been busily stringing nearly 200,000 LED lights — more than 14 miles worth of lights — in preparation for the first-ever “Gardens Aglow” seasonal event, which will run through Dec. 31.
“I don’t know if I really quite fathomed what it would look like,” horticulturist Jen Dunlap said as she took in the ever-brightening light display that turned the monochrome autumn terrain into something from a fairytale. “Now that it’s all together, it’s pretty amazing.”
“Gardens Aglow,” billed as the largest LED light show in the state, came about because staff at the gardens wanted to find a way to make an early winter attraction that would complement existing spring and fall events and entice visitors to come to Boothbay in the quiet season.
“The dream is to bring traffic to the Boothbay peninsula at a time of year that visitation really drops off,” said Kris Folsom, director of marketing. “We looked at other gardens to see how they address seasonality. We looked all over.”
One idea that resonated was turning the gardens into a light show. Folsom said she surveyed people to see if they would be interested in coming and found that enough said yes, that staff began to drape their gardens in the blue, pink, yellow, orange, purple, green and red lights.
Frank Merrill, a facilities assistant, said that at the beginning, he felt overwhelmed by the task.
“It’s such a vast area,” he said. “I thought how are we ever going to cover this area? But we did it. At first we were going to just do a few here and a few there, but it didn’t work. So every few days, we said ‘More lights! More lights!’”
“It’s like a big color explosion,” Folsom said.
In order to string the lights, workers used ladders, a borrowed scissor lift and cherry pickers. Some inched their way up the tall evergreen trees “like bears,” Merrill said, to wrap the trunks in shimmering bands of light. They stayed late in order to see what their handiwork looked like after dark, and just days before the scheduled opening, they were still making tweaks to the display.
Bill Cullina, the director of gardens, was among those working into the evening to make the display even better.
“We’re really hoping this will be a chance to expose the gardens to a whole new audience,” he said. “It’s still the gardens, but the flowers are now lights. And this time of year, what’s better than lights?”
“Gardens Aglow” will be open from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday nights from Saturday, Nov. 21, through Thursday, Dec. 31, at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. It will be closed Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Eve. Admission is $12 for adults, $6 for ages 3-17, and $10 for ages 65 and over, with reduced prices for families and members. The gardens are located at 132 Botanical Gardens Drive in Boothbay. For information, call 633-8000 or visit www.MaineGardens.org.