On the first day of fall this year, I was able to knock of a BIG bucket list item… And visit a place that had 90,000 pumpkins in ONE location!
Y’all, I can’t even begin to describe how much I was freaking out on this day (just asking my husband and our two friends)!!! It was totally surreal, and I’m still kind of pinching myself and secretly trying to figure out how I can convince my husband that we should grow 90k pumpkins and create a fairytale land with it for people to visit… A girl can dream, right?
Anyways, excited to share more photos and a video walk through of our visit to the Dallas Botanical Gardens and their beautiful setup, which they call “Autumn at the Arboretum.” It was an absolute dream, with so many pumpkins in every shape, size and color.
So here’s the video tour from that magical day:
If you’re wanting to go, please note that it’s going to cost you. Some Botanical Gardens I’ve visited were free, but this was not the case for this one. It was $15 for parking the car (which interestingly enough, was paid at the front by your being honest and saying you parked) and then $15 a person. So it was a $45 excursion for just about 90 minutes of walking around! For me, it was totally worth it! For my husband and two friends? I think they’d say it was worth it just to see how much joy I got out of it. But I wanted to share, as it’s something to be mindful of.
Anyways, we walked in, and literally you were instantly greeted by tons of pumpkins. It was such a beautiful sight! I may or may not have squealed out of joy (okay, I totally did). It was just amazing to see so many pumpkins decorated together in one spot, and this wasn’t even the showcase yet!
Then the pathways leading up to the display were covered with pumpkins… It was literally like pumpkins were leading the way to even more pumpkins!
Had to stop and take a few feet selfies. Again, so thankful for my sweet husband and friends for being patient with me as I stopped at nearly all the pumpkin bunches and took about a zillion photos!
Below, this is near the entrance of the pumpkin display. It was literally like an ocean of pumpkins all around! It was pure bliss for me… This Pumpkin Lady was definitely in her place!
So once you walked in, the pumpkins were displayed to be a “Neverland” theme! There was Captain Hook’s Pirate Ship, The Darling House and the Lost Boy’s Home. It was all so sweet! On the opening day (which is when we went) they even had several of the characters from Peter Pan dressed up to truly play the part. It was so sweet!
At one point, I heard a child having a very in-depth conversation with his mom and Captain Hook (all kind, of course). I just made my heart smile, and had me pause for a moment to image the childlike wonder of a place like this (especially when you’re only the size of maybe 2-3 pumpkins). Again, very sweet! Excited to take our own kids here someday (or again, maybe just take them into our future pumpkin patch backyard).
The full on pumpkin houses? Those were definitely a dream! Again, I felt like this entire morning I was taking future inspiration for crazy-Pumpkin-lady ideas to ask Daniel in the future. I mean, a pumpkin house wouldn’t be THAT difficult to build, right?
Yup, totally in my happy place – surrounded by pumpkins!
So thankful for our dear friends, Brittani and Koby, and of course my precious husband, for being willing to take me on this adventure! Again, as silly as it sounds, it was a total dream come true and a huge-notch on the bucket list. Visiting 90,000 pumpkins on the first day of fall? Couldn’t imagine a better way to *officially* kick off my absolute favorite season. What’s even better? Getting to share in this experience with people I dearly love! So thank you, darlings, for being a part of this adventure!
There you have it! A full picture-and-video-load of 90,000 pumpkins in Dallas! Have you ever been to their Autumn at the Arboretum show? I’ve also heard about one in Nashville that I’m currently trying to convince my husband to take me to! It’s called Cheekwood Estate & Gardens (link here if you want to check it out and visit)!
P.S. So it wouldn’t be a full pumpkin visit, unless I came home with some pumpkins. Right?! Unfortunately, the Botanical Gardens was wanting $3 for a SMALL pumpkins (which I previously paid $0.69 cents for at Trader Joes) and $15 for a regular pumpkin… Didn’t even get to price out the Fairy Tale/Cinderella pumpkins, but I knew this was a little much considered we had already dropped $45 on the visit.
So my darling friends took me to a “Farmers Market” (kind of like a small, local grocery store) in the suburbs of Dallas, and I was able to pick up a few more pumpkins for a much better price! Plus, I was able to support local farmers and their picks, so I considered that a double win.
I also loved how they shared the names of the pumpkins, so cute!
