HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Although Garvan Woodland Gardens can't celebrate the holiday seasons with its annual nighttime lights, the gorgeous grounds are now beautified by a daytime winter garden festival.
Garvan Woodland Gardens this year features a pavilion reimagined as a life-sized snow globe, complete with Christmas trees and an antique sleigh inside, plus special landscaping on the park's Camellia Trail designed by Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design students.
This year's garden festival runs through the end of the year, daily except for Christmas day, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with the last admission at 5 p.m.
This year's festival actually provides more room to explore, including the the Evans Children's Adventure Garden, Evans Tree House, Hixson Nature Preserve, and Perry Wildflower Overlook. Those areas traditionally have not been part of the annual holiday light show.
Sherre Freeman, marketing director at Garvan, said this year's theme is "Home for the Holidays," which fits with COVID-19 social distancing.
There are light installations and the train, plus the 10 different installations created by the architecture and design students that visitors will see along the Camellia Trail.
"Our camellias bloom in the winter, so the concentration of winter flowers is on the Camellia Trail. Those installation designs are out there. They're really unique. They're really really fun," Freeman said. This was a way for the University of Arkansas to partner with Garvan Woodland Gardens for the winter display.
Minnie Shelor, Garvan's garden manager, says they reimagined everything as a daytime show.
Decorations at the welcome center keep a traditional holiday feel.
"Most of our features are less traditional. We do have the pavilion done to look like you're standing inside of a snow globe," Shelor said. Less traditional are installations like a fairy ring, along with Moravian stars - "a type of light that we've used above it."
Features were selected to be attractive during the dusk hours and the day. There's an area for ice crystals, a swan and an ice wreath. "Where people can kind of wander through it. There's stepping stones that go through it, so they get to get a little bit closer to the lights than they have in the past," Shelor said.
Because they're doing daytime hours, the entire garden is open. "That's an advantage," Freeman said, noting the last hour of the day is dark.
She explained that nighttime events were impossible to do, in part because there on the peninsula pulling up timed ticketing on cell phones has not worked. Timed ticketing would be needed because there's no way to socially distance 5,000 people per night within a three-hour time slot.
Hence, Garvan chose to stretch out the daytime hours and allow more space for visitors to physically spread out on the grounds.
"We just felt like to be responsible citizens during the COVID thing that we couldn't create something where people could not socially distance and possibly the spread of the disease would be worse," Freeman said, adding that this decision has not been popular but she thinks it is responsible.
The daytime garden covers 210 acres to explore, rather than the previous night display covering 17 acres. "We wanted to stay open. We've had a great year this year," she said, adding, "We wanted to provide a festive holiday kind of environment but yet make it safe for everybody."
Visitors can enjoy the gardens all day long if they wish.
Free hot chocolate will be provided at the Chipmunk Cafe, open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily.
(Admission: $15 adults, $5 ages 4 to 12 and free for ages 3 and younger. Tickets are available at the door, cash or credit card accepted. Dogs on a short leash are allowed for $5. Golf cart tours available on a limited basis for an extra $15 per person. Garvan Woodland Gardens is located at 550 Arkridge Road in Hot Springs, Ark.)