I can’t come up with an appropriate adjective for Gardens Aglow at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay Harbor. Amazing, astonishing, fabulous, fantastic. Even these do not completely describe this display.

You really must see it sometime between now and December 31. It’s not expensive and you can buy tickets on their website or when you arrive.

This year’s display has more than 500,000 lights. That’s about 43 miles of lights! The lights are displayed in the gardens and trees and on the buildings and many are moving or going off and on, very entertaining.

Our daughter Hilary, who took this and the remaining photos and who lives in Washington DC, was home for Thanksgiving so we took her to Gardens Aglow. Our other daughter Rebekah and my sister Edie joined us for a great evening. We slowly walked the paths and took – well we must’ve taken hundreds of photos. I will share some of them with you in this column but even the photos don’t do the display justice.

The entire town of Boothbay has bought into this wonderful Christmas celebration with their Festival ofLlights. You want to cruise around town and check out all the lights.

The Botanical Gardens has snack stations with everything from soup and chili to donuts and pretzels and their café was open with a special menu. We had hoped to eat there but by the time we checked it out the was a one hour wait. While the evening was cool, the warming station was warm and the inspiring lights kept us outside for several hours.

There were lots of families there with little kids who were captivated by the magic, including multigenerational families embarking on a new family tradition for Christmas. And we even saw quite a few people in wheelchairs, thanks to the easy accessibility of the buildings and grounds.

The display runs from Thursdays through Sundays until December 31 and starts each day at 4 PM. We recommend getting there early to get a good parking place and have plenty of time to thoroughly enjoy Gardens Aglow.