For Christmas, Ted and I decided to give ourselves the gift of the Missouri Botanical Garden Glow followed by dinner at a restaurant. Just as we didn’t have time to walk and admire the holiday lights and decorations on Historic Main Street before Christmas, we didn’t have time to attend Glow before Christmas either. Like Historic Main Street, Glow opens on Thanksgiving Day (timed tickets required for this event) but remains open through the first weekend after New Year’s Day.

Here’s the entrance to Glow.

The grounds’ 79 acres were covered with light displays. At an ambling and admiring pace, it took us about an hour-and-a-half to walk the entire path on a clear, calm winter evening with temperatures in the mid-30s. A variety of large St. Louis area corporations sponsored many of the light displays.

I couldn’t help wondering how the decorators managed to cover the trees in the picture above so thoroughly with lights. The trunks and bases of the trees looked very authentic, and the display title included the word “oak” in its name. The leaves were oak-shaped, but the trees were not. Curious minds want to know, so I took a close look at the branches to see how the lights were attached. That made it obvious that the trees were not actually rooted in the garden, which led me to wonder how the installers transported and stored the “trees.” I looked even closer and now I know. Check the assembly lines indicated by my arrows in the two photos below. The trunk is comprised of two pieces, the large branches attach to it, and the smaller branches attach to the larger ones. Some assembly required. 🙂

Artificial or not, the little patch of trees was a pretty display. Maybe we should buy one or two of these for our own holiday lighting.

I remember this display from our Glow visit in 2023, but I still like it. The tree is one of three set in an emptied reflecting pool, and the multiple layers of lights over it create an illusion of water below. (The illusion probably disappears in daylight when you can see the web of the lights’ electrical wires in the empty pool.)

Some of the displays are static; others are not. This one (another photo of the blue tree above) is not. I took a short video to capture some of the lighting changes. A variety of holiday music plays throughout the park. Turn on your audio if you want to hear some of it.

Here’s another light display.

I didn’t think a still photo did justice to this display, so I took another short video. Again, you can listen to the music if you want to. It’s easy to see why we chose Glow as our Christmas gift.

When we reached this point, we were nearly back at the main entrance where our walk began.

We decided to have our Christmas gift dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory in the Chesterfield Valley–about halfway between the Botanical Garden and our house. By the time we arrived, the crowd had thinned, our server was very nice, the pasta was delicious, and we finished our meal with the Factory’s signature spumoni ice cream.

Now our 2024 winter holiday season is over. We went to the International Women’s Brass Conference concert, celebrated with our family, spent time with friends, enjoyed the holiday lights on Historic Main Street, and had a beautiful evening at the Garden Glow. It was a nice way to end 2024 and to begin 2025. Happy new year!