Get your tickets here: Christmas at Colonial 2025 | Colonial Gardens
- Christmas at Colonial is set up entirely by our staff here at Colonial Gardens.
Garden centers are a seasonal business, which means we need to be innovative in how to keep our staff busy and employed throughout the year. Luckily, we have an exceptionally creative and talented team that contributes to setting up our events. Christmas at Colonial is led by our Operations crew, Justin and Kevin, but they have lots of hands assisting with setting up and designing different parts of the experience. For example, our Plant Care Team took the lead on our Fairy Garden this year, adding more detail and art to that renovated space. LeeAnn, our florist, loves to reimagine Santa’s room, this year bringing a candy-themed Christmas to St. Nick’s room. Lucas and Steve take the primary lead on all the high lights you see, renting a lift to wrap trees over 20 feet in the air. LJ and Beck helped coordinate and maintain the dancing portions of the display. There are so many more people involved, all taking important steps to make our light show a reality.
- It’s not just Santa…
Santa is the primary character that attends nights of Christmas at Colonial. Meeting him and taking pictures with him is all included within the ticket (check times and dates). But Santa isn’t the only special guest at the light show! This year we are hosting the Grinch in Santa’s place on December 6th, 2025. Every year the cast of SVRDC’s The Nutcracker joins Santa to meet our guests (December 7th, 2025). We also have an extremely talented singer, Avery Bitzer, who provides live entertainment on select nights in our poinsettia house.
- The train set has lots of hidden surprises
With so many things going on at the light show, it’s easy to miss our miniature train set inside our poinsettia house! Justin takes about a week perfecting the elaborate set up of Christmas villages, scenes, hidden characters, and of course, trains. His trains are Lionel trains, a company that is celebrating its 125 year anniversary. With such a storied history, this train set connects folks across generations, exciting children with all its detail and reminding many adults of their own childhood toys.
If you’re visiting on a busy night and do not want to see Santa, you can still enjoy the trains by entering the front of the poinsettia house. Or you can visit the trains after you see Santa.
- You get a discount at our gift shop.
If you don’t visit the gift shop, you haven’t truly experienced all the Christmas magic we have to offer. Each family that visits the lights prior to Christmas gets a coupon to the gift shop for your holiday shopping. Even if you’re not here to shop, it’s a great place to get inspiration for the holidays. We have over 20 themed Christmas trees with lots of in-house art. It’s just an exciting space to visit and see 1000s of different ornaments and different Christmas styles. Our gift shop team worked so hard to make the shop an entertaining shopping experience. We hope you’ll stop by!
- You can do good at the light show.
Spending your money at small businesses has an outsized impact on your community. Not only are your dollars more likely to stay local, it gives us lots of opportunities to reinvest that money into important community causes. In addition to our own donations, we have collection bins for Toys for Tots and PACS in our gardenhouse. Hot chocolate is included with the price of admission, but we encourage you to put any spare change or a few dollars in our donation jar that supports Orion Communities, a local non-profit that helps our neighbors in need connect with services and stay in their homes. We hope you’ll help us give back to the place we call home in whatever way you’re able.
We’re so proud of the light show that we’ve created here at Colonial Gardens and love hearing about the many memories everyone makes when they visit. We hope to see you soon!