Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden’s award-winning Botanic Lights opens to the public tomorrow night (Thursday 13th) promising their most ambitious and interactive shows to date.
The theme for this year’s 22-night run of events is “Exploration”. Visitors can expect to retrace the steps of exotic plant collectors throughout history “from the Arctic to the Himalayas”.
The event’s programme boasts of new and interactive technologies including motion-tracking Kinect sensors which will allow visitors to influence the light display with their hand movements, as well as a hologram of pioneering plant-hunter George Forrest which will appear in the RBGE’s Chinese garden section. The event also features original music by Scottish composer Claire McKenzie.
Botanic Lights 2016 is produced by Unique Events, who have been in charge of organising the event for three years now.
Penny Dougherty, director of Unique Events said they were “privileged” to be staging the event once again and said that the event would be “an extraordinary display, offering visitors a rare opportunity to enjoy this wonderful Garden from a completely different perspective.”
Grant Anderson, who is the light artist for this year’s Botanic Lights said : “Visitors may find that the familiar becomes strangely unfamiliar at Botanic Lights this year. They will get a sense, through sight and sound, that they are on a journey of discovery from China to the US, the Himalaya and Nepal, and on to the tropics, and the wonder of the chilly Arctic. The power of light and nature will transform Edinburgh’s Garden into an awesome adventure across the globe.”
Heather Jackson, Director of Enterprise at RBGE described this year’s events as “something magical” and reminds visitors that the money raised from ticket sales help the gardens protect and catalogue world plant life, saying: “Each ticket sold will help to fund our important science and conservation work and in return we are sharing a bit of that magic with each and every visitor.”
The Botanic Lights 2016 runs for 22 nights through October and November. Tickets and further information can be found at www.botaniclights.co.uk
Reporter and Student Journalist at Edinburgh Napier University.
