Chihuly's Glass Sculpture Exibition - Desert Botanical Garden, Arizona

Whenever I think of Arizona, the picture of warm weather, palm trees and  and huge cacti plants come to my mind.








 Therefore we made sure we went to visit the Desert Botanical Garden, about a thirty minute drive from downtown Phoenix.

A Human Like Saguaro Plant

Gigantic size desert plants at the Botanical Garden

The Dessert Botanical Garden was opened in 1939 and this year the garden celebrates its 75th year anniversary.













Until we visited the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, I had never seen cacti plants as high as 40 feet!

The Botanical  Garden is a living museum of living plants and it has plants from deserts from around the globe.

 Visiting the Desert Botanical Garden was a relaxing and a very educational experience as there were many explanations about deserts and how people and animals made use of desert plants while inhabiting the land.

The size of some Cacti trees is gigantic!

 We were very fortunate on our visit as there was also a special exhibition on at the same time - Chihuly in the Garden .

We planned to visit the botanical garden early but was told that around sunset, the colour would be spectacular. So we timed our arrival to the garden in order to catch the sunset.

Chihuly's work blends in well with the living plants!

With the discount coupon, it cost U.S. $19.00 /person for the admission. The Desert Botanical Garden has an area of about three hundred acres and it would take us quite sometime to walk through all the trails.

Fortunately, the friendly guide gave us excellent instructions of where to start and which trail to see first.

Chihuly's Artwork adds a lot of colour to the garden

My husband and I are interested in sculptures and we really wanted to see the works of Dale Chihuly - an American artist, who is renowned for his large size glass installations in gardens and famous cities around the world.

We love garden tours and learn about different plants and flowers. But the Desert Botanical Garden is unique and  absolutely beautiful!

 Blue Crystal by Chihuly

We were memorized by the explosion of beautiful colours,  the vast variety of species, shapes and gigantic sizes of some desert plants.

Chihuly's White Bulugas

I kicked myself for forgetting my nice camera at home, therefore, I had to learn to use my husband's ipad to take pictures during our garden visit.

Chihuly's Blue Crystal & other pieces look really real

It was inconvenient at times but I did manage to capture many of Chihuly's work.

We really enjoyed looking at the exhibition. The artist's work blended in so well with the living plants that at times it was difficult to tell whether his artwork was pieces of glass or was it a real plant at all.

Chihuly's Scarlet & Yellow Icicle Tower sculpture among the desert plants

We got to the garden at around 3 p.m. and had spent a few hours admiring the various desert gardens,  reading the information and learning about the deserts and desert plants from the displays.









We waited around till 6p.m, as we wanted to see the art installations in the early evening light. We were not disappointed at all!

The traffic in the garden suddenly increased as groups of visitors started coming in for the evening tour.

We could sense the anticipation in the air as people were milling around sampling wine and chatting happily about what they were going to see.

The blue sky acted as the background for the artist's canvass

Around 6p.m., the lights in the Botanical Garden came on and they lit up the plants and the artist's artwork.

With the blue sky as the backdrop, the lights reflected beautifully on the glass sculptures

We were very glad that we visited the garden and saw the exhibition without waiting for long lineups like people in other countries. It was a fantastic experience! We have never seen anything like it before!




R.T.
Desert Botanical Garden
Phoenix, Arizona
U.S.A.