The Winter Garden aGlow at the Idaho Botanical Garden provides a magical experience for the entire family to get into the Christmas spirit.
The Idaho Botanical Garden is a non-profit and this marks its largest fundraiser of the year as the team works hard to transform the garden for the holidays.
"Yeah, we start the first week of September so that is about ten weeks of light hanging we have 600,000 lights," said Grace Pinkston. "We got a lot of new installations this year that we put up that require a little extra effort."
This year a journey through the garden takes people through a waterfall way past the luminaria swirl and over to the kid's gingerbread house.
For the adults, the brand new snow globe bar features a place to warm up with special drinks like hot chocolate and the abominable egg nog before the adventure continues to the gumdrop sea and the candy cane forest which was one of the best places to get that family photo.
"Oh my gosh, it is so worth it," said Rachel Ostermiller who was there with her family. "I’m obsessed with Christmas lights so I love this, it is right up my alley and it definitely gets you in the mood for the holidays."
The Winter Garden aGlow is open Wednesday through Sunday nights until New Year's Eve. People can purchase tickets online and it shows you if Santa will be there, or if a choir will be singing or if the Snow Glow Bar will be open so you can personalize your experience.
"We strive to be a community gathering place for the Boise community and the greater Treasure Valley," said Pinkston. "For people to come out and see all the work we have put in and pay admission to come to our event to keep the garden going, it means everything to us.”
The garden is located near the Old Pen off Warm Springs Road. It is a good idea to leave early with the construction on Warm Springs and we can tell you the garden was really busy on Friday night.
