How you can help local art bloom at Tucson Botanical Gardens

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — The Tucson Botanical Gardens (TBG) can feel like an art museum inside of a garden.

“We use all sorts of different types of arts to tell the story that the plants themselves can’t tell, and that we wouldn’t be able to tell ourselves,” Laura Uccetta, Youth Education Coordinator at the Gardens, told KGUN Monday.

Local artists created more than 100 elaborate birdhouses to fill the Christmas tree that greets guests at the entrance.

“It’s about 165 birdhouses actually,” Uccetta explained. “A couple of local floral shops came together and had volunteers come in and make all of these birdhouses. So they started with a form and then they were given creative license to just create kinda whatever they wanted. So you’ll see some really unique designs in here.”

Through Sunday, Jan. 7, the ‘Lights Up’ experience will light up nights at the Gardens. It’s the second year TBG has put on a large-scale lights show for the holidays.

“Over a million lights that are used,” said Uccetta. “We hired a landscape architect to design the whole thing. And it is so spectacular… Local artists have come to make certain iron features… hanging as stars from trees.”

For another months-long art project, TBG is collecting hundreds and hundreds of plastic bottle caps and container lids.

“Water bottle, a soda bottle, a laundry cap, anything that’s plastic that caps a bottle,” said Uccetta. “We have some great artists that work here at the Gardens who are going to make a mural and then guests can pick bottle caps up and add them to the wall... In order to give people even more of an example of what they can do in order to turn trash into art.”

TBG is collecting those caps through the end of January. The mural is expected to be complete by then and will be displayed through the spring.