NightGarden Transforms Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Into Real-Life Enchanted Forest

Floridians miss out on snow for the holidays, and the jolly guy in the red suit dresses a bit more tropical when he visits, but this holiday season, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden brought back its annual winter exhibition, NightGarden, from Nov. 12 through Jan. 2.

Located in Coral Gables at 10901 Old Cutler Road, the immersive outdoor experience was ideal for photo shoots with perfect lighting and allowed you to conquer your Instagram feed.

The eighty-three acre garden by day is an escape into nature with a collection of rare and exotic tropical plants and trees. But during the holidays, it transitions into a winter wonderland where fairies talk and flowers are technicolored when the sun goes down. 

As guests enter, they are transported into an exquisite world of color, lights and sounds. This year, a new downloadable companion app was merged into the experience, called Fairyscope, an augmented-reality game. It allowed users to search for seven fairies that were hidden around the NightGarden. 

Visitors were also given the opportunity to visit rainbow-colored walkways and sparkling dandelion wooded areas and allowed to chat with Archimedes the talking tree. 

Throughout the NightGarden there were also mazes that allowed you to walk through technicolor flowers, laser light shows and holiday special effects with sound sensors that made music as you explored it.   

Motion-sensing technology, outdoor holograms and sculptures also projected dancing butterflies on trees to bring the installations to life. The facility also offered mouthwatering food from a variety of food trucks that included arepas, ice cream and grill trucks. 

Free sparkling-flavored water was also handed out throughout the garden.