Atlanta Botanical Garden's Garden Glows with Bruce Munro's Garden Lights!

The Atlanta Botanical Garden will be aglow this spring when it hosts the stunning outdoor art exhibition Bruce Munro: Light in the Garden, featuring unique installations created from hundreds of miles of fiber optics.

Munro, a British artist internationally acclaimed for his use of light as an artistic medium, will transform the Garden into an enchanting setting May 2- October 3. Open Wednesday through Sunday evenings, Light is a site-specific exhibition and the largest by the artist in the Southeast.

“This exhibition will be something unlike any other that Atlantans have experienced,” said Garden President & CEO Mary Pat Matheson. “At dusk, the Garden will become this enchanting yet natural landscape that visitors just have to see to believe.”

Inspired by everything from childhood humor to meditation, Munro conveys his love of experimentation through flickering light tubes, LED-lit bottles and innovative repurposed materials.

The exhibition includes six diverse site-specific installations, from immersive environments to sculptures, both throughout the gardens and inside the conservatories – some set to music. Equally diverse are the artist’s materials, from fiber optics to recyclable plastic bottles.

The exhibition’s largest and most spectacular installation, Forest of Light, features more than 30,000 flower-like spheres of light atop slender stems blanketing Storza Woods – a massive display that can be experienced both from the ground and from the Canopy Walk above. The display is an adaptation of Munro’s iconic Field of Light first exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2004 and the largest installation of its kind in the world to date.

Another installation, Water Towers, includes massive cylindrical sculptures made of thousands of lighted, water-filled one-liter recyclable bottles.

Munro, whose first exhibition in this country was at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA, in 2012, learned about design and lighting while living in Australia shortly after college. In 1992, he returned to southwest England and set up a studio as an installation artist working in light. For several years, he created unique architectural lighting and sculptures for private residences and commercial spaces. Today, supported by a team of designers and technicians, he creates exhibition works and commissioned pieces.

Matheson said visitors are encouraged to come at dusk to see Light as it slowly comes to life. The exhibition also can be enjoyed as an extended evening experience complete with on-site dinners at The Café at Linton’s and cash bars.

Open from 6 – 11 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, Light is a ticketed special event. Admission is $22.95 adults, $15.95 children 3-12 on Peak Nights (Friday-Saturday) and $19.95 adults, $13.95 children 3-12 on Non-Peak Nights (Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday). Admission for Garden members is discounted to $9.95 adults, $7.95 children 3-12 every night (prices do not include sales tax and online transaction fee).