This Christmas, we checked out Brookside Gardens’ Garden of Lights.

The past few holiday seasons, I haven’t been really feeling the Christmas mood. Maybe it’s because we don’t do as many Christmas decorations as used to, or because we used to have family members bursting out the seams of our homes during the holidays, but nowadays it feels a lot quieter.

That said, I’ve been trying to get myself in the holiday mood this year. I went up to New York for work, but then decided to go and check out all the Christmas related decor happening around the city. I walked through Bryant Park even, which has become a bit of a nightmare to navigate during the tourist high season, which is a sign of my dedication lately.

Anyways, my sister asked if I wanted to go to the Brookside Gardens. The entry fee was $12 and almost an hour away from our home, but she saw it on TikTok and wanted to check it out. I said yes because why not, it was a reason to get out of the house.

This is going to be a shorter blog post today. Usually under my “travel” sorts of blog posts I write about longer trips, but I was inspired by some Naver (a Korean search engine of sorts) blogs I would see in Korea. Basically these bloggers would write short little posts about day trips and places they visited.

These posts would even be about local parks and whatnot. I liked these a lot, even if my Korean isn’t fluent and I couldn’t entirely understand what they were saying in the posts.

I also like these short little write ups even if they’re not “optimized” for SEO and generate a revenue. Sometimes in life it’s about the little things, and I think a lot of people need to be reminded of that lately.

Anyways, let’s get into the post! I can tell I’m beginning to ramble.

A garden, at night, full of Christmas decorations and lights.

We began the evening at my sister’s friend’s townhouse, where they ordered a lot of pizza, salads, and my sister brought a cake from Yia Yia’s Bakery in Baltimore County. The pizza I didn’t catch the name of where they ordered from, but the pizza margherita was very solid. The crowd favorite was the cake from Yia Yia’s Bakery, which was chocolate, vanilla, and cheesecake.

Anyways, from Columbia, where we met everyone, it was about thirty minutes to the Brookside Gardens. From Baltimore County, it was about an hour, so it’s a bit of a hike if we wanted to come straight here.

We scanned our ticket from the car, then joined up with everyone else inside of the Visitor Center. The entire garden we managed to get through in about an hour; it’s not that big, and you want to move somewhat briskly in the cold.

This experience is basically at night, where you can’t see the plants, but instead are looking at all of the lights covering the trees, gazebos, and across the lake. It was quite pretty to look at, even if some of the music choices by the Christmas trees were questionable.

At 7-9 PM at night on a Saturday it wasn’t too crowded, especially right before Christmas. We mainly had the walkways to ourselves, but at certain areas people were congregating and it felt a little tight. It’s also not an ideal place for pictures if you’re into that, as the lights drown out people.

At the end/beginning there’s also a food truck. They mainly had fries, hamburgers, and hot dogs, but we got the hot chocolates because we were freezing by the time we had walked through the entire garden space. The hot chocolate was small and $5; I wouldn’t get it again if we’re being honest, as it tasted like Swiss Miss. The food looked and smelled delicious though, so maybe order that instead!

We left somewhat satisfied with our experience overall.

We went on a really cold night, and while I was appropriately layered up and had my scarf, hat, and so much more on, I could see some other people on the trail looking somewhat miserable. So if you’re going later in December, definitely check the weather and dress appropriately as all of the experience is outside.

Like the Brookside experience was fine overall. My sister and I agreed that it was average, while her boyfriend gave it a 7.8/10. For us, it seemed like a bit of a far drive, but if you’re more local to the area then I think it’s something that would be more worth it to you.

The $12 price tag wasn’t bad for what it was, and it was nice to look at all of the lights. We just weren’t sure if it was worth coming this far to see when we could almost reach Longwood Gardens in the same amount of time.

So if you’re local and want something cute to do, like a date or family night, I’d say go for it!

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