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During the springtime, Houston Botanic Garden bursts with vibrant colors and life as its plants begin to bloom in the warmer air. During the winter, Houston Botanic Garden also bursts with vibrant colors and life, though most of its blooms rest dormant. The 2023 holiday season debut of Tianyu Arts and Culture’s Radiant Nature drew in 83,000 people, so the team decided to bring the event back this year with an all-new lineup of Chinese-style lanterns.

Running until February 23, Radiant Nature lets visitors explore and interact with around 55 individual lantern installations, including pandas lounging in a bamboo forest, purple coneflowers (a plant species native to this region), a 40-foot-tall Chinese temple, gingko trees, and plenty more stunning sights. Aside from the angel wings bearing the Houston Botanic Garden’s name and the light-up swings, nothing is the same from last year’s presentation.

“We know it was a big hit last year, but we want those people that came last year to come and see it again and feel like they’re getting a familiar experience, but something new,” says Justin Lacey, HBG’s director of communications and community engagement. “Obviously, for the folks that missed it last year, [they’ll] get that same wonderful experience.”

Tianyu’s design team, based in Chicago and Zigong, China, came up with all the plans for Radiant Nature’s lanterns, with input from HBG on what to include to make the show more unique and personal to the region, such as the Louisiana iris and the aforementioned coneflowers. The company often works with zoos and botanic gardens, so drawing up lanterns depicting animals and plants is commonplace for the artists. They design the lanterns using traditional Chinese methods, though constructed with updated materials to meet stringent weatherproofing and visitor safety needs.

“Obviously, hundreds of years ago, [the lanterns] would be paper and maybe wires to hold it down. Right now, we’ve really modernized the whole process with new steel frames and base structure to really anchor them on the ground, because Houston gets, I’ve heard, hurricanes, tropical storms,” says Gary Qi, the Tianyu project manager who oversees Radiant Nature. “We’re really making sure that it’s safe for people to come over here.”

Qi also mentions a special type of fabric and glue meant to keep the lantern structures stronger and more stable are brought over from China, where the materials are manufactured, and have to ensure safety compliance with the lighting elements.

“There’s a lot that goes into the lighting side of things, how the LED light strip is constructed within the actual frame of the lantern,” he says. “It really is a modernized approach to a very traditional type of artwork making.”

It takes a team of about 29 to set up the installations, and four members of Tianyu’s staff will remain on hand throughout the duration of the show to keep things running. HBG makes for an ideal place to set up the massive lanterns, owing to its size and open spaces.

“Upon arriving at [HBG], it just seemed very obvious [to work with them]. It’s the perfect place for these kind of things,” Qi says. “With the garden layout, you have the coastal prairie area, which is just perfect. There’s nothing there. It’s a whole path. We can just fill that area with our stuff, and it’s really an immersive experience that way.”

To HBG, both Radiant Nature and the partnership with Tianyu offers a way to spread a love of plants during a time of year when its collection is recharging in a wintry respite. Light boxes will be set up featuring a few native plants, and the horticulturists have written descriptions of each to teach visitors about the lush vegetation that blossoms among Houston’s concrete.

Plants and animals feature so heavily into the show as a means of inspiring and encouraging visitors to love, honor, and celebrate nature, even as nature sleeps for a season. It’s a reminder that, once spring rolls around, the local ecology will need Houstonians to show it some care and kindness.

“[Radiant Nature] is very much an entertainment, escape type thing, but especially for people that are interested, they can take away something,” Lacey says. “That’s our year-round mission in action, through the holiday light show.”

Disclosure: Prior to joining Houstonia’s staff, the author of this article did some freelance consulting work for Houston Botanic Garden.