What to Know
- "Enchanted Forest of Light"
- Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge
- The holiday lights experience features numerous displays, including 4000 electric tulips on the garden's Promenade
- $22-$45 non-members; other ticketing tiers are available
- Through Jan. 5, 2025 (most nights)
Descanso Gardens is about 30 miles from the nearest beach, driving-wise, but it would be accurate to say that a sort of hypnotic wave is occurring there nightly as the holiday season deepens.
This isn't a wet wave, like you'd find at the edge of the Pacific; rather, it is a wave of light, a ripple effect that passes through thousands of electric tulips, turning them from white to yellow to pink to red to green.
Call it hypnotic, holiday-inspired eye candy, the sort of spectacular scene that "Enchanted Forest of Light" delivers each year.
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The illuminated event, which is beckoning visitors into the property's oak-filled forest through Jan. 5, 2025, is a Descanso Gardens tradition that colorfully kicks off when mid-November arrives.
The tulips deliver waves of color and light just inside the garden's entrance near the adorable train depot section, but there are several other visual treats to savor.
Be sure to make time to linger among the red lanterns of the Japanese garden, the quirky chandeliers displayed in a woodsy setting, and sculptor Tom Fruin's stained glass houses.
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And the generously sized geometric sculptures of HYBYCOZO send intricate shadows across long stretches of ground.
Music-filled installations, playful spots encouraging interactivity, and peaceful places to sit in a serene state also line the wending, mile-long route.
The Flower Power area, though, is always a major draw for visitors, and for good reason: It is easy to linger and stay transfixed by wave after wave of color.
Sometimes all the tulips — and there are around 4000 in all — will share a single hue, while other moments find four or five saturated colors dancing across the glowing garden.
It's a pleasant space that is home to real tulips in the spring, around 30,000 of them.
With that in mind, you might think of the electric tulips as mystical and merry cousins to their warm-weather counterparts, making the limited-time presence of the fantasy flowers all the more bewitching.
