Garden of Lights show to run Dec. 14-17
Mill Pond Garden’s popular Garden of Lights holiday show will run from 5:30 to 7 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 14, to Friday, Dec. 17, on Red Mill Pond near Lewes.
To learn more and purchase tickets, go to millpondgarden.com. Subscribe free on the website to get email notice of open nights for the light show, open garden days and other events.
In accord with the latest state recommendations for COVID safety, masks are recommended but not required, and social distancing applies.
“There is no safer venue, no happier way to enjoy going out than an outdoor public garden with all fresh air and lots of space,” said Michael Zajic, director.
“We think this is Delmarva’s only large walk-through light show, nothing more enchanting. Displays include the moon, mushrooms, meteor shower, buzzing bees on flowers and more. The theme is the garden itself, featuring shrubs, trees, flower beds, dancing fountain, flowing stream and pond all decorated in lights. Clumps of lighted roses, hyacinths and lilies made of lights all come together in this perfectly enchanting experience. There is not a better way to see a light show than to be immersed in it, with a fragrant cherrywood fire for warming up.”
Mill Pond Garden subscribership has grown from 125 local residents in 2018 to over 1,800 local households today. The site offers a schedule of open days at peaks of the flowering season and provides horticultural education, information and expertise to visitors. Mill Pond Garden is a holistic, sustainable, mostly native public garden for year-round beauty in all seasons and for the accommodation of abundant wildlife.
The Garden of Lights gives visitors a half-hour walk-through show. The display has grown in size to 36,000 lights that use and promote LED energy-saving installations. Some visitors call it magical. There is a wonderful vista of lights along Red Mill Pond’s shores and neighboring docks.
The show is designed by Michael Zajic, who was trained at Longwood Gardens. He used that training to create a world-class, million-light show at Brookside Gardens for the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. Zajic also consulted for the renovation of the Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden’s light show in Richmond, Va., in 1998. A horticulturist, Zajic is the founder of the Delaware Botanic Gardens in Dagsboro, founder of Mill Pond Garden in Nassau, and founder of the Cape Farm and Garden Tour of 2016 and 2020.
The Mill Pond Garden light show is a lively garden-theme fantasy. The displays are creatively crafted by a team of two Sussex County gardeners trained for lights.
