Half a million lights, hung by hand

This is last season’s display, not this year’s: Longwood Gardens, in Pennsylvania, published this account in December 2025¹. We include it because it is one of the few lighting stories that shows the people who do the work.

Longwood says the display used more than half a million lights, including more than 30 miles of lights on more than 170 outdoor trees, and it credits a team of dozens of horticulturists, arborists, craftspeople and volunteers¹.

Built, not bought

The new centrepiece on the Large Lake was a set of floating gem-shaped sculptures, 14 to 18 feet high, handcrafted by Longwood’s own carpenters and metalworkers and wrapped in lights¹. Along the Meadow Garden boardwalk, light shards 12 to 25 feet tall were synchronised to the sounds of wind, chimes and owls¹.

Members of our team paddle out on the Large Lake during install.

Longwood Gardens, caption to Troy Sellers’s photograph

Even in a display this big, the finished pictures show the discipline from the rest of this issue: bright points against a dark lawn, lit trees reflected in still water, and a path that stays readable.

From the project

On the east end of the gardens, a floating ribbon of red and green lights leads along Flower Garden Drive, and on the Small Lake a collection of stars sits on and beside the water so that their reflections double them¹. The 200-foot tunnel of lights in the Meadow Garden also returned¹.

Longwood credits each photograph to the person who took it, staff and volunteers alike¹. The two install pictures here are by Troy Sellers; the lawn is by Duane Erdmann, a volunteer photographer.