Hershey Gardens is sporting a new steel sculpture that lets visitors see moving mosaics of live flowers via three kaleidoscopes mounted over a planter.
The garden kaleidoscope is the work of Wisconsin steel sculptor Robert Anderson, who’s been making the pieces since 1997 after earlier careers as a river-raft guide and maintenance engineer.
More than 150 of Anderson’s sculptures are on display in 30 states, mostly in public gardens, museums, municipal buildings, schools, libraries, and hospitals with a few in private corporate buildings.
Hershey’s kaleidoscope is located in its new Senses Garden, which just opened last year a short walk back in the 23-acre grounds from the Children’s Garden.
It sits on a circular pad of pavers at the west end of the Senses Garden, near the Japanese Garden bridge.
The piece was donated by avid Monaghan Twp. gardener and Hershey Gardens member Beverly Hartman, who has been fascinated with kaleidoscopes since childhood.
Hartman was even more impressed when she first saw one of Anderson’s four-a-half-foot kaleidoscope sculptures at the Franklin Park Conservancy in Columbus, Ohio.
She’s since seen similar ones at the Penn State Arboretum and the Tucson Botanical Garden in Arizona.
“After being completely fascinated by the thing, it occurred to me that it would be great if one could exist at Hershey Gardens, especially since plant material is used to create the image,” Hartman said. “This kaleidoscope is such a cool way for me and others to experience that on a larger scale… What better place to have a kaleidoscope than in a garden?”
The sculpture is rounded, three-armed, and made out of black steel. Brass kaleidoscopes are mounted at three different levels, allowing visitors to rotate them and focus on flowers in the bowl below, creating moving mosaics.
Anderson describes the pieces as “interactive living sculptures.”
Hershey Gardens is located at 170 Hotel Road in Derry Twp., just below Hotel Hershey. Fall hours through Dec. 31 are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, except 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve. It is closed Thanksgiving and Christmas days.
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