Winter Glow

This year Laura and Aaron gave us a years membership to the Meijer Gardens for Christmas. Meijer Gardens is 158 acre Botanical and Sculpture Garden - named best Sculpture Garden in the United States by USA today, and the #2 Botanical Garden in the United States.  We are so blessed to have a place like this near to us.  And now we will enjoy visiting it frequently!

They asked if we wanted to go with them on Friday night to see one of the exhibits that's been running through Christmas called Winter Glow.
For this they set up displays of Christmas trees decorated for every country around the world. They also decorate inside and outside with glowing lights.  There is an amazing train set up in the gardens inside with buildings made of all natural things that are modeled after notable buildings from Grand Rapids.

Here's a few photos of our visit.

The front of the building as we walked up from the parking lot.

Lots of trees with different decor to look at.

In Brazil the kids put their shoes under the tree, instead of hanging stockings.

Alaina and Ruby in front of the tree from the Netherlands.

Here's some of the "glow" outside.  It was beautiful and the photos don't do it justice.

This is looking at the back of the building from the Childrens Gardens.

Looking over the grounds from the building.

Then there was the Railway Garden.  There were 45 buildings from the Grand Rapids area and 5 from sister cities.  Seeing how they made these to scale, using natural materials like leaves, flowers twigs and mushrooms to make them was amazing.

A covered bridge that is well known around here.

This is the Mercer May house, a Frank Lloyd Wright home in Grand Rapids.

A charming little church.

A close up to show you the leaves on the roof and the mushrooms for steps.

Meijer Gardens building.

Even the Grand Haven Lighthouse!
We would have enjoyed studying these more, but there were lots of people trying to look at them.

Here's everyone in the Conservatory.

This picture doesn't really show how large this star was, hanging up high.

Everything was beautiful, and we had a great time wandering around enjoying it.
I'm sure you will see more pictures as we explore in the coming year.