Festival of Lights, VanDusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver

© Wiliam Perry/Alamy Stock Phot

The luminous spirit of nature. VanDusen Botanical Garden, Vancouver

In today's image, nature and human creativity's dazzling fusion shows the Festival of Lights—an event organized annually between November and January—in the VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver. The garden is home to 55 acres of land filled with plants from all over the world, including a large collection of plants native to British Columbia. The botanical garden opened its doors in 1975 and was named after a local philanthropist and lumberjack, Whitford Julian VanDusen. In the buzzing city, the peaceful oasis charms visitors with its diverse and colorful flora, water features, sculptures and totem poles. For the bundle-of-energy type of guests, the Elizabethan Maze—created with 2,000 cedar trees—provides entertainment with its clever twists and turns.