The holiday season starts much earlier for volunteers at the Bellevue Botanical Garden, who have for the past two weeks been planting the walkable electric floral exhibit and winter touchstone that is Garden D’Lights.
Carolyn Ward starts thinking about designs for Garden D’Lights in the summer, and finds herself confronting fall weather to realize them. Ward has been volunteering to set up the light festival at the garden since 2002.
“I just like it,” she said. “I like working with lights and I like working with color.”
Ward, like most of the 20 volunteers for Garden D’Lights, is a Bellevue retiree who is willing to commit the time to planting light arrangements shaped like flowers, trees and bushes in the botanical garden during the November rain.
“We know we’re going to get wet,” she said during Monday’s work session. “We just know we’re going to get wet.”
When the rain gets heavy, volunteers retreat to the newly opened visitor center to help others checking bulbs or making more light pieces. There are more than 500,000 lights that go into Garden D’Lights, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.
“We’re like Santa’s little helpers, just busy, busy,” said Candice McIvor, who is leading organizing efforts with Mike and Nan Welter. “It’s camaraderie. We all have a good time. We all like walking it.”
Tom Furin inquired about the lights in the ground while walking through the botanical garden in 2008 and has been volunteering ever since. He said he prefers the installation part of the project and looks forward to the show.
“We open after Thanksgiving, and if it’s not done and ready as it should be, it’s not as good a show then,” Furin said. “We want to give a good show.”
“I like the idea that this whole thing has been done by a bunch of amateurs and old folks,” said Anne Chin as she installed a yucca light plant with her husband, Tony. “Everybody here can create something.”
Chin said Garden D’Lights doesn’t go as far into the garden as it did when she started volunteering in 2002, but recent construction has opened up lawn space near the visitor center for installations.
Volunteers have until the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to complete the installation, which will debut at its new hours of 4:30-9:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 29; last entry at 9 p.m. Tickets are available online at gardendlights.org.
