Lightscape at Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens

Last night, I had a wonderful time visiting the 2023 Lightscape event at Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. These gardens are beautiful at any time but the Lghtscape installation creates a superb illumination of the gardens at night.

I went with daughter Cathy and we had a really good time with a dinner package at the Vietnamese style Jardin Tan Restaurant before entering the display. The only negative was that this event is so popular, car parking is at a premium. We drove around searching for a parking spot until Cathy saw one a few streets to the south of the Gardens. It was outside a school and only had a five-minute parking limit until 6.30 pm. As it was 6.10 pm when we arrived, we took our chances and fortunately the parking officer was either home for dinner or occupied somewhere else.

Not only does this Lightscape event include a number of stunning artistic lighting displays, it does a good job of highlighting the natural beauty of the gardens. It provides a magical and enchanting atmosphere.It was a jaw dropping experience to walk along two kilometres of illuminated paths and see the various light sculptures, and enchanting displays that brought the gardens to life after dark.

There were over 100,000 carefully placed LED lights that Illuminated the environment and rotated through different colours. There was even different music coming from individual trees.  I found lakeside reflections, beautiful colour-changing installations, large-scale illuminated sculptures and different surprises all along the way. My photographs show something of the event.

It was a super night and well worth visiting. I went to last year’s Lightscape event and I’ll certainly be going next year.