This is the second time we’ve kindly been invited to visit Glow at RHS Harlow Carr in Harrogate, an annual spectacle where the gardens and all within it, including the Queen Mother’s Lake become illuminated in lights, conjuring a magical natural kingdom where big and little ones can lose themselves in its wonder!
If you don’t yet feel festive, this trail of lights promises to inspire even the Scroogiest amongst us.
With even more musical and interactive activities for children to enjoy, as well as Christmas shopping, festive food and drink, each year seems to expand its offering and the possibilities for fun.
With snowflake baubles of light hanging from the trees’ branches to the gardens blooming with bold balls of fiery colour; large life size lit-up reindeers, and not forgetting vast rainbow-speckled bubbles for children to chase (amongst many other things to see and do), this truly is an enchanting experience, especially with little ones in tow.
Florence, just 4, was dazzled by the evening, running through winding tree-lined paths she knows well (we’re RHS members) but as if she was experiencing anew, as the shrubbery and flowers sparkled around her.
What a treat to run around a park at twilight.
My personal favourite-lake and adjacent piano path aside-had to be the ancient Greek temple-like folly which was lit up in blaring yellow beams of light surrounded by glorious green and blue waves of colours beneath it. Visible from the very start of the trail as we entered, and then closer up of course, in all its glory after a circular walk around to locate it.
Its history is fascinating.
In 1961, the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, intent on preserving the masonry of the defunct Harrogate’s Royal Spa Concert Rooms presented Harlow Carr with the columns and these gardens on the crest of Harrogate is where they’ve remained ever since, and despite a subsequent suggestion in the 90s that they be returned for a new exhibition centre. They really are staggeringly beautiful, no more so than when lit up in this way.
…With marshmallow stations, a chance to buy cake, biscuits, wreaths, plants and more in the on-site shops and pop ups, it feels like a delicious treat to be in nature and the great outdoors (with a spot of retail therapy to boot) on a winter’s evening rather than festering inside. The shining lights extinguish the gloominess that can so often fall upon the season providing you with the wondrous marriage of nature, art and technology.
It might still be November but it’s certainly beginning to feel a lot like Christmas…
19 November – 23 December
4.30pm – 8.30pm.
Book in advance.
Prices:
RHS member prices*
Adult (or family guest): £10
Child (5–16): £5.25
Children under 5 free
*RHS members enjoy reduced prices as their membership package already covers garden entry
Non-member prices
Adult: £17.25
Child (5–16): £9.25
Children under 5 free.
We were provided with press tickets in return for this honest review.
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