10-21-2024 9:19am

Leonard J. Buck Garden To Host Floating Luminaries Event

Donnella Tilery Editor

FAR HILLS, NJ – Experience the magic of “Thankful Lights: Floating Luminaries” when participants make and decorate a lantern and release it into the water to give thanks and awaken the spirit of nature. The event takes place from 5:30 to 7 p.m., Friday, Nov. 1, at Leonard J. Buck Garden’s Lower Pond, 11 Layton Road, Far Hills, NJ 07931. Pre-registration is required online. The cost is $20 per person.

Participants will create a lantern with a personalized message, then attach it to an illuminated float and release it into Lower Pond, where dozens of floating lights will drift on the water at dusk to create an optical treat of light and dark reflections.

The Floating Luminary event was adapted from a traditional Japanese ceremony, Toro-Nagashi (floating lanterns), which began in Japan in 1946 to honor deceased family members. Other countries have modified the Japanese ceremony to represent peace, tranquility, spirituality, gratefulness, and nature.

For more information, call 908-722-1200, ext. 5621, or visit somersetcountyparks.org. Individuals with hearing impairment can use the Relay Service by dialing 711.

About Leonard J. Buck Garden

Leonard J. Buck Garden is known as one of the finest rock gardens in the eastern United States. The beautiful garden consists of alpine and woodland gardens sitting among a 33-acre wooded-stream valley. Mr. Leonard J. Buck developed the garden as part of his estate in the 1930s, and it was donated to the Somerset County Park Commission by Mrs. Helen Buck in 1976.