You’d think public gardens would be mainly a summer thing since flowers and plants are their bailiwick.
Not so.
Many of these botanical attractions — especially ones with greenhouse and conservatory features — draw waves of visitors eager to see gardens decorated to the hilt for the winter holidays.
Chester County’s Longwood Gardens, for example — one of the most visited public gardens in the world — is actually at its busiest during its annual six-week “A Longwood Christmas” show.
Besides decorated Christmas trees and crazy amounts of string lights, some public gardens set up elaborate holiday displays featuring miniature villages, fountain shows, vast arrays of poinsettias and paperwhite daffodils, and model trains running through scaled-down landscapes.
Here’s a rundown of what public gardens within day-trip range of Harrisburg are doing for the 2025 holiday season.
Hershey Gardens
Closest to home, Hershey Gardens is staging its annual Christmas Tree Showcase of evergreens decorated by 11 local florists, garden centers, and designers.
Also part of the 2025 display are two trees made out of potted poinsettias (one an eight-footer and one a 14-footer) and a Garden Cottage with evergreens decorated with ornaments made by local school students.
Returning after last year’s debut is a photo-opportunity station — a retired car from Hersheypark’s Comet roller coaster, repurposed as Santa’s sleigh.
The conservatory’s Welcome Pavilion and Butterfly Atrium are also decorated for the holidays.
The holiday displays run 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through New Year’s Day in the Milton and Catherine Hershey Conservatory. The Gardens close at 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve and are closed Christmas day.
Other holiday activities include: a visit with Santa on Sat., Dec. 13, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; a story time with Mrs. Claus on Sat., Dec. 20, at 11 a.m., and “Crafty Christmas Creations” family holiday craft-making in the Children’s Garden Education Center on Dec. 6, 13, 20 and 27 from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Tickets are $17.50 for adults, $16.50 for seniors aged 62 and up, and $13.50 for ages 3-12. Children 2 and under are free.
The 23-acre Hershey Gardens is located at 170 Hotel Road on the hill above Hersheypark, which itself is staging its annual Christmas Candylane with more than five million lights. More garden information is on the Hershey Gardens website.
Longwood is famous for its holiday light and music shows in the Open Air Theatre.George WeigelLongwood Gardens
The 2025 “A Longwood Christmas” show features jewels and jewelry-inspired lights.
As always, visitors will have plenty to see and do for hours — fire pits, fountain shows, decorated Christmas trees, elaborate bloom displays inside the conservatories, a Garden Railway, and half a million lights.
Inside, Longwood’s sprawling conservatories this year showcase landscape-sized trees gleaming in sapphire blue, ruby red, emerald, and gilded metallic colors; fabrics shimmering in jewel tones; gemstone-inspired lighting, and sparkling crystals overhead.
The Music Room has a 12-foot, jewel-encrusted tree growing out of a larger-than-life jewelry box, surrounded by a holiday banquet scene and mirrors at every turn.
The Ballroom has multiple glittering trees decorated by local art centers, and the new West Conservatory (which debuted last year) features jewel-adorned cut trees that seem to float on water.
Thousands of poinsettias, paperwhite daffodils, amaryllis, and other holiday flowers are in bloom throughout the conservatory complex.
Outdoors, the Gardens’ trees, arbors, and various other outdoor structures are strung with those half-a-million lights.
This year, glowing gem forms are floating on the Large Lake, and a “Wildlife Tree” is decorated with faux pearls, gilded oyster shells, and treats for birds.
The Garden Railway has miniature trains chugging past miniature Longwood landmarks, and 750 water jets dance daily to holiday-favorite songs in the Open Air Theatre.
Altogether, Longwood offers 1,100 acres of gardens near Kennett Square, Chester County, just under two hours southeast of Harrisburg.
Holiday-season adult tickets are $45 ($25 for ages 5-18). Because the Christmas show is so popular, advance purchase of timed tickets is required. Members also have to reserve times in advance. More information is posted on Longwood’s hours-and-ticketing page.
Hours are daily 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. A Longwood Christmas runs through Jan. 11.
The Dried Flower Tree is a popular holiday regular at Winterthur Museum, Gardens and Library.Courtesy of WinterthurWinterthur Museum, Gardens, and Library
A 15-minute drive down Kennett Pike from Longwood is this “other” du Pont estate, the former mansion of Henry Francis du Pont, best known for his collection of American decorative arts.
Winterthur is a combination American decorative-arts museum, library, mansion, and 1,000 acres of gardens, meadows, and woodlands.
The outside grounds and lights are open for touring (including tram tours) on nice days, but the highlight is the “Yuletide at Winterthur” tour of H.F.’s 175-room mansion.
House tours are available of the mansion in its holiday dress, featuring decorated trees, a large-scale gingerbread house, an 18-room dollhouse, and the popular Dried Flower Tree adorned with dried flowers and plant parts.
Assorted other talks, tours, and events happen throughout the season and are posted on Winterthur’s online calendar.
Yuletide 2025 hours are daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Winterthur is closed Mondays and Christmas day and closes at 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
New this year is extended “Holiday Nights” hours in which Winterthur stays open Friday and Saturday evenings during Yuletide at Winterthur until 8 p.m. (except for Dec. 26).
This year’s Yuletide runs through Jan. 6.
Tickets are $30 for adults, $28 for teens 13-18, students, and seniors 62 and up, and $9 for ages 3-12. Admission includes the house tour.
Advance tickets, available online or by calling 800-448-3883, are recommended. More information is on the Winterthur website.
The Brandywine Museum’s annual holiday railroad features 2,000 feet of track and miniature settings with more than 1,000 pieces.Brandywine Museum of Art/Philip Gabriel PhotographyBrandywine Museum of Art
A short drive from both Longwood and Winterthur along Route 1 in Chadds Ford is this combination of American art inside and riverside native-plant gardens outside.
Every Christmas since 1972, the Brandywine Museum of Art has been setting up an elaborate indoor Brandywine Railroad featuring O-gauge model trains and trolleys running on 2,000 feet of track.
The 2025 display has more than 1,000 pieces in a setting that includes a small village, a farm, factories, a drive-in movie theater, and a carnival.
New at the museum this year is a special exhibit called “Home for the Holidays: Cards and Hearths from the Collection.”
Set up in the Strawbridge Family Gallery, this display features holiday cards with original artwork by Wyeth family members and other prominent American illustrators, plus two rooms of the nine-foot dollhouse designed by Ann Wyeth McCoy and built by her artist husband, John McCoy. The rooms are filled with handmade furnishings and miniature paintings.
The “Home for the Holidays” exhibit also features a miniature replica of an 18th-century Brandywine Valley house.
Another returning hit for the holidays is the collection of “critters” that volunteers make using natural materials such as pine cones, acorns, egg shells, flowers and seed pods.
Brandywine hours are daily 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., except closing at 1 p.m. on Christmas Eve and closed all day Christmas day. Hours extend to 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Dec. 26-30. Christmas exhibits run through Jan. 4.
Holiday ticket prices are $25 for adults, $23 for seniors (65 and up), and $10 for ages 5-18 and students with ID. Children 4 and under are free.
The museum is located at 1 Hoffman’s Mill Road, Chadds Ford. Information on additional special activities are listed on the Brandywine Museum website.
The Nighttime Express model train display is the centerpiece holiday attraction at Philadelphia’s Morris Arboretum.Mark Stehle/Morris ArboretumMorris Arboretum
Pennsylvania’s official 92-acre state arboretum is open most December days in daylight, but the main holiday draw here is the garden railway after dark, called “Nighttime Express.”
The one-acre train display at Philadelphia’s Morris Arboretum and Gardens is one of the biggest outdoor miniature train displays in the U.S. with more than 15 lines running along a third of a mile of track.
It features tunnels, cable cars, bridges, miniature Philadelphia-area landmarks, and a landscaped village. New this year is a 60-foot-long Holiday Tunnel of Lights.
After dark, the display takes on a new dimension when the tracks are lit with sparkling lights, and the surrounding trees shine with laser lights.
You can see the train village during the day as part of the arboretum’s general admission charge, which is $22 for adults, $20 for seniors (65 and up), and $12 for ages 3-17. To see “Nighttime Express,” however, you’ll need a separate ticket bought in advance.
Nighttime Express runs only on these dates: Dec. 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, and 21.
The grounds are closed altogether on Dec. 24 and 25 and on Dec. 31 and Jan 1.
Nighttime Express ticket rates are $22 for all non-member adults, and $12 for ages 3-17. Children 2 and under are free.
The arboretum is open most days in December from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Then the grounds are cleared and closed for the Nighttime Express events, which run from 4:30 to 8 p.m.
Also at the arboretum, the Morris Cottage is decked out in wreaths and holiday greenery made by the horticulture staff.
A free-with-admission Conifer Tour is scheduled for Dec. 13 at 11 a.m., and free-with-admission Garden Highlights Tours are offered weekdays at 10:30 a.m. and weekends at 1 p.m.
Morris Arboretum is located at 100 E. Northwestern Ave., Philadelphia. More information is on the arboretum’s website.
Miniature D.C. landmarks are a highlight at the U.S. Botanic Garden’s annual Season’s Greening show.George WeigelU.S. Botanic Garden
The nation’s botanic garden at the foot of Capitol Hill in the heart of Washington, D.C., is back open after the government shutdown and plowing ahead with its usual “Season’s Greenings” holiday exhibits.
You’ll find holiday attractions both inside the spacious, 14-room glasshouse and outside in the surrounding gardens. And it’s all free.
The indoors is lavishly decorated with thousands of poinsettias, orchids, and other colorful tropicals as well as D.C. landmarks made out of plant parts.
The conservatory also features rooms with themes such as medicinal plants, Mediterranean plants, and desert landscapes, plus there’s a current special exhibit called “Fierce Flora” that highlights the defensive tactics that some plants employ.
Outside, G-gauge model trains run through the lighted, gated gardens. This year’s theme there is “Dino-Mite,” which has the trains running through displays of dinosaurs made from plant parts, plus living plants whose ancestors lived alongside them (cycads, ferns, magnolias, etc.)
The outdoor gardens include a rose garden, a native garden of mid-Atlantic species, a pollinator garden, and the First Ladies Water Garden.
The conservatory is open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (except closed on Christmas day). The outdoor gardens are open 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. (also closed on Christmas day) with the trains running from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. most days (with extended evening hours on Dec. 9, 11, 16, 18, 23, and Jan. 1).
Season’s Greenings runs through Jan. 4.
More information is available on the U.S. Botanic Garden website.
Brookside Gardens uses some one million lights in its annual holiday Gardens of Lights exhibition.George WeigelBrookside Gardens
If you’re a holiday-lights lover, this 50-acre Wheaton, Md., park beats even Longwood for the sheer number of lights – a whopping one million of them.
For most of the year, Brookside Gardens (run by Montgomery County) is a botanic garden disguised as a public park. It features themed areas such as a rose garden, a perennial garden, an aquatic garden, a children’s garden, a woodland walk, and two conservatories with tropical plants. It’s all free, too.
But for the Christmas season, Brookside adds a nighttime “Garden of Lights” exhibition that sends visitors on a half-mile trail through lighted tunnels, past giant characters framed out of lights, and under trees pulsing with animated lights. Pretty much everything is lit in that corner of the grounds.
There’s a charge, though, to see this impressive light show, which opens at 5 p.m. and runs through 9 p.m. most days through Jan. 4. The exceptions are Dec. 24, Dec. 25, and Jan. 1, when the Gardens are closed.
Visitors can still stroll the gardens for free during most days in December, but the grounds are cleared at 4 p.m. with tickets then required to get in for the light show.
Garden of Lights tickets are $13.99 Sundays through Thursdays and $16.99 Fridays and Saturdays.
Tickets are required for each person aged five and older. All tickets must be purchased in advance online, and the tickets are timed entry with a specific day and entrance time. Tickets are not sold at the gate.
Garden of Lights is an outdoor, rain-or-shine event. Tickets are non-refundable, unless Brookside cancels.
Parking is available at the main entrance at 1800 Glenallan Ave., Wheaton, and the conservatory entrance at 1500 Glenallan Ave.
Tickets, more details, and a brief video of the show are on the Montgomery County website.
Baltimore’s Rawlings Conservatory adds a model train and holiday decor to its five conservatory rooms.City of Baltimore/George WeigelHoward Peters Rawlings Conservatory
Another holiday-adorned plant attraction just a 90-minute drive south of Harrisburg is the historic five-room Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory in Baltimore.
Originally a palm house and orchid room known as Druid Hill Conservatory, this conservatory and surrounding acre and a half of outdoor gardens is the nation’s oldest iron-and-glass-framed conservatory still in use.
It opened in 1888 and is now operated by Baltimore City Recreation and Parks.
For the holiday season, Rawlings Conservatory adds lights, poinsettias, and a holiday train display to the usual five rooms of themed greenhouses (palm house, desert house, Mediterranean house, tropical house, and orchid collection). There’s also a gift shop.
This year’s train display, built in conjunction with the Baltimore Society of Model Engineers, is themed “A Candy Garden” and features hand-made, candy-inspired décor and tropical plants grown at Cylburn Arboretum.
Holiday hours are Wednesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (closed Mondays and Tuesdays). The conservatory closes on Christmas Eve this year at 1:30 p.m. and is closed all Christmas day.
Rawlings’ Holiday Display runs through Jan. 4.
Admission is free. Walk-ins and donations are welcomed.
The conservatory is located at 3100 Swann Drive near the Maryland Zoo in the city’s Druid Hill Park.
More information is available on the Rawlings Conservatory website.
Pittsburgh’s Phipps Conservatory lights its outdoor gardens with these lights in addition to special holiday plant displays in its indoor conservatory rooms.George WeigelPhipps Conservatory
Three-and-a-half hours might be pushing day-trip range, but one last public-garden holiday show worth considering is Phipps Conservatory’s Holiday Magic show in Pittsburgh.
This one is mostly inside Phipps’ 14-room, 1893 Lord and Burnham Victorian glasshouse, but there’s also a large outdoor garden filled with lights, plus lights in the outdoor Children’s Garden and glowing lanterns in the Japanese Garden.
Everything is lit with energy-efficient LED bulbs using all renewable energy, some of which is produced on site.
This year’s Holiday Magic show features multi-colored trees with twinkling red flowers, topiary reindeer strolling through a snowfall of white poinsettias, an orb tree shining above glowing icebergs and topiary polar bears, topiary penguins having a snowball fight, and a hydrangea garden under lighted arbors.
There’s also a Garden Railroad in the center of the conservatory. It’s themed this year as “The Age of Dinosaurs” and has scale dinosaurs roaming greenery that’s evolving from ferns, cycads, and conifers to the planet’s first flowering plants.
Phipps’ Holiday Magic show draws widely and sells out in much of December – especially weekend evenings and the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s.
Advance tickets are required and are available online at the Phipps website.
Ticket prices vary depending on whether you go at a peak time or not. Adult prices range from $22.95 to $27.97, senior prices (62 and up) from $20.95 to $25.95, students (19 and up) from $19.95 to $25.95, and children ages 2-18 from $13.95 to $15.95.
Hours are daily 9:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. most dates through Holiday Day, except closing at 10 p.m. Dec. 7-10, Dec. 31, Jan. 1, and Jan. 4, and closing at 5 p.m. on Dec. 24. Phipps is closed Christmas Day.
The last day for Holiday Magic is Jan. 4.
Comments are closed.