The Bonsai Garden at Lake Merritt will close during the day on Thursday through Sunday this week for the Autumn Lights Festival. On Friday and Saturday nights from 6:00 – 10:00, Lake Merritt  will be filled with lanterns, carved and lit gourds, glass bubbles below the surface of the ponds, and electric fireflies in the trees all created by local artists plus a cast of entertainers and food purveyors. The Friends of the Gardens at Lake Merritt (FGLM) will be mounting their annual Autumn Lights Festival. 

Thanks to generous donations from a few  of our patrons, we will light the Bonsai Garden in an even more spectacular fashion than last year when we had up-lights on bonsai and path lights.

Bay Area artists create lighting specifically for each section of the Gardens including the Palm Garden, the circular paths of the Sensory Garden, the Mediterranean Garden, the Japanese Garden, and the Edible Garden. In years past, artist creativity has included cars spewing fire, glowing waterfalls, a flock of interactive books, a Polynesian Paradise with hand-crafted tiki lanterns, and live fire art performers.

Patricia Bulitt, dancer and interdisciplinary artist, will perform in the Bonsai Garden during the Autumn Lights Festival on Friday evening, October 17. She has toured throughout Japan, New Zealand, Canada and US as a solo dancer especially drawn to making site specific dances honoring nature. Honored with grants to study traditional Japanese NoLight Dancer 10-01-14h Theatre in Kyoto, and making an improvisational dance in the Japanese Garden in Tsuwano, Japan, she has served as guest artist to the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and made many community programs honoring Nature.  On October 17th, Patricia Bulitt will be featured in our Bonsai Garden making improvisational dances inspired by the shape and form of the trees and the environment of light! www.patriciabulitt.com.

Attendees are also encouraged to participate in the event by creating their own luminarias and neon bubbles. Many of the attendees don’t just donate to the cause by purchasing an admission ticket. They add to the extravaganza by coming dressed in their most interesting illuminated garden attire. Music and sound installations fill the night air while a silent auction, Garden merchandise available for purchase, and food trucks add to the festivities.

Our Lighting Plan:
The large bonsai tree at the outside corner of the BGLM along with its companion suiseki will be lit with three cylindrical paper lights and a pair of landscape spotlights. Along the outer fence as you walk towards the front gate, we will place feather banners borrowed from Sei Boku Bonsai Kai. Each feather banner will be lit by a solar spotlight. The banners will lead the attendees toward the front Gate at the Bonsai Garden at Lake Merritt.

The Japanese maple tree just to the side of the front gate will be hung with Japanese paper lanterns. Inside the Bonsai Garden, folks will see each tree in our collection lit from below by soft LED lights. Clusters of paper lanterns will be hung from the shade structures. More Japanese lanterns will be hung from the trees along the perimeter fence and some of the taller trees will have their trunks and lower branches illuminated by solar spotlights.

The pathways will be lit by our own special luminaries (tea lights in brightly colored plastic cups. The tokonoma alcoves will be lit from above and will display three bonsai at their finest. The crab apple tree that sits across the path from the tokonoma will have fairy lights dripping from its branches and the dry streambed will glitter with blue lights as well.

We can’t wait to show you and our hundreds of other visitors how great our bonsai look in such a spectacular setting.