Louisiana Lights runs Thursday through Sunday, Nov. 29 to Dec. 29. The first session begins at 5:30 p.m., and the last starts at 8:30 p.m. each night. Tickets start at $20, and parking starts at $10. Special events include Poinsettias & Prosecco on Dec. 4, A Rural Life Christmas on Dec. 8 and Barks & Bright on Dec. 12. Ticket prices vary. Find more info here.
Binging holiday flicks. Singing corny carols. And trimming trees. There are plenty of deep-rooted traditions around the holidays. But one historic local attraction is hoping to cement itself as a new holiday must.
The multimillion-dollar light show Louisiana Lights: Where the Holidays Shine, sponsored by Visit Baton Rouge, has taken years to develop. It finally shines this month, with custom light fixtures enhancing the outdoor space at Burden Museum & Gardens. Expect dangling, glowing birds, a 30-foot light-up tree and an illuminated tunnel. Some of the over 360,000 twinkling bulbs will sync up to music created for the show.
“Holiday light shows are a huge draw for museums and gardens across the United States,” says Jeff Kuehny, director of the LSU AgCenter Botanic Gardens. “They probably have been for the last 20 years.”
The team imagined what the 25 acres of land and 32 historical buildings at the museum’s Windrush Gardens might look like bedecked with the kind of dazzling, large-scale light show seen in cities like Dallas. Kuehny, Rural Life Museum Director Bill Stark and their staffs felt that the over-a-century-old property would be the ideal space for such a display. The land already has spanning paths that take about an hour to an hour-and-a-half to walk through, which they felt was just the right pace for an extensive installment.
Plus, the show is bound to shine a much-needed light on the Windrush Gardens, Stark says.
“When people come out to the property as a whole, a lot of the time Windrush will be the last place that they really see and experience,” Stark says. “People who do know (Windrush) love it and think of it as a hidden gem in Baton Rouge.”
But after the new display debuts, the hope is that Windrush will be hidden no longer.
Because of Windrush’s historical significance and natural beauty, it was important to create a light show that enhanced the space rather than distracted from it. A landscape architect, 3. Fromme Design, was commissioned to design a one-of-a-kind experience. Electricity was coordinated to be easily accessible around the gardens. Original fixtures and activation pieces were fabricated by The Memoir Agency, an Orlando company responsible for similar light shows around the country.
Stark says Louisiana Lights doesn’t follow a central theme or storyline but rather has different immersive areas or activations for attendees to walk through. At the end of the trail, there will be an exit experience with s’mores making, games and live music performances from LSU students.
There is so much more that went into the show than stringing lights, Keuhny says.
“This is not something that you can take and just plunk down in a local park,” Stark adds. “It relies on the tree growth, the structures that we have and the features in the gardens. One of the things that I think we’re all pretty insistent on is that it reflects the gardens and amplifies them.”
And on Nov. 29, the switches will finally flip, illuminating years of planning and casting a multicolored spotlight across Windrush Gardens. Stark and Keuhny hope the show attracts locals looking for a new experience while also bringing new visitors to Baton Rouge. All they have to do is follow the glow coming off of Essen Lane.
This article was originally published in the November 2024 issue of 225 Magazine.
