Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison has 16 acres of gardens to explore as well as a domed conservatory full of tropical plants. By day, it’s a lovely place to stroll and enjoy many varieties of plants. But by night, it’s transformed into an art exhibit called GLEAM. It's a unique opportunity to see the gardens illuminated at night and enjoy several interactive displays that play with the natural beauty of the gardens.
The tour begins in the Bolz Conservatory where the tropical plants are lit in vibrant color schemes. As visitors make their way through the two floors of the conservatory they'll find giant caterpillars hidden throughout.
"There is an insanely wide variety of caterpillars in the natural world," Missy Jeanne the Public Programs Manager for Olbrich Botanical Gardens says. "I don't know if everybody always realizes that, so some of them have spikes, some of them look hairy, some have patterns, but it's kind of a seek and find situation. So as guests...move through the conservatory space, they can locate these 16 different caterpillars."
As guests move outside into the open air of the gardens they'll find nine different installations throughout the garden. Jeanne says visitors will follow the outer loop of the garden finding different installations along the way. A few of them are interactive.
You can make a massive ball modeled after an allium plant glow by holding hands and touching two nearby sensors. You can talk into a speaker to make creatures appear on three screens and you can bop the tops of pitcher plants to make them sing at the Thai Pavilion.
This year's GLEAM is based on a creature theme. Jeanne says, "GLEAM is an outdoor art exhibit. It's not a light show or a festival. So it's different in the way that like maybe a more holiday-focused light show would happen. It's not necessarily an explosion of thousands of lights and just sort of endless displays. It's focused more specifically on highlighting the gardens themselves and featuring things that are more site-specific to a garden setting."
Other things to do near Madison in October:
Schuster's Haunted Forest
Terror at Tyrol
Cave of the Mounds
