Winter Wonderland: Twinkling Rediscovery Forest filled with surprises

By Brenna Wiegand

A magical and charming event at The Oregon Garden is bound to become a holiday tradition for families and friends.

Reminiscent of a traditional German Christmas market, Christmas in the Garden will take place from 4 to 9 p.m. every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from Nov. 29 to Dec. 22. Visitors will board the Holiday Express tram, which will whisk them through the Oregon Garden to the beautifully decorated Rediscovery Forest, that has been turned into a winter wonderland.

“The entire event is happening in the Rediscovery Forest,” said Brittney Hatteberg, Oregon Garden marketing manager. “You start out going through a 100-foot-long tunnel draped with lights…”

The forest is bedecked with more than 150,000 holiday lights. From decorated wooden booths, artisan vendors will sell handmade goods. Authentic German food will be created by Oregon Garden Resort Chef Michael Spragg, and fire pits, live music and holiday beverages are just icing on the strudel.

“We are very excited to introduce this new holiday experience to our guests,” Hatteberg said. “It will be a very authentic, cozy holiday event that we hope will become a tradition among families.”

The event originated a few years ago at the flagship Moonstone Hotel Properties resort in Cambria, Calif., and has been well received.

“…so we’re moving that tradition up here and putting our own unique twist on it,” Hatteberg said. “We are going to have Santa and his reindeer and different things throughout the event that they don’t have down there.” One addition is the airing of the Civil War football game in the forest on the same big screen used for Movies in the Garden. Guests wearing University of Oregon Duck or Oregon State University Beaver attire on Saturday, Nov. 30 receive a dollar off admission.

Perhaps the most unique twist is a 9-foot leg lamp as seen in the movie A Christmas Story.

“We just kind of started thinking about what kind of things are interesting to us and what makes us feel like Christmas,” Hatteberg said. “A lot of people brought up watching A Christmas Story.

“A couple of our maintenance guys got really excited about it and they’re making an actual lamp that works,” she said. “It’s going to be amazing.”

Staff and about 120 volunteers are at work on the project – another example of resort and garden working together to create events attractive to both tourists and locals. The resort has already sold more than 200 of its $99 overnight packages offered in conjunction with the Christmas MArket, she said, and attendance at such events continues on the upswing.

Molalla resident Darla Lynn of Treasure Mosaics will be one of the vendors participating in Christmas in the Garden. Lynny uses a variety of materials in her mosaics, which range from small pendants to 3-D art to large wall pieces. As Treasure Mosaics, she is looking forward to another Silverton art venue after taking part in the Silverton Fine Arts Festival last summer.

“Several commissions came out of that, in addition to all the sales,” she said. “We were welcomed with a wonderful artists’ reception; it was just overall wonderful. Artists sometimes have a hard time being welcomed into a community.

“Silverton has really become an arts town,” she added, “and I support that 100 percent.”

The owner of Creative Carved Art, Mary Wilkerson lived in Cambria last year and was a vendor at that Moonstone hotel’s Christmas in the Garden.

“It was the best show we have ever, ever done,” she said. “Who would have known that a simple little venue just a couple minutes from our house would turn so huge?”

A beachcomber with a purpose, Wilkerson said it is surprising the things she finds.

“It’s so fun because I’m on the beach looking for Santa faces or the feathers on a duck’s side,” the Springfield woodcarver said. “I sand the driftwood a little bit but a lot of it is taken care of by the water. Then I paint.”

Wilkerson reached an impasse when the sugar pine she’d used for years became nearly impossible to come by.

“I’m always walking the beach, and all of a sudden it was like, ‘This is what is free; I can carve this,’” she said. “…and each piece is unique and different; it talks to me and tells me what it is and where its face is. I do all kinds of birds and ducks and now otters from the driftwood.”

Now Wilkerson carves the creatures’ heads from basswood and joins them to the driftwood ‘bodies’ that inspired them, transitions from the precise to the “naturalness” of the driftwood piece that inspired it.

Vendor Cindi Duvall is the owner of  The Tippin’  Teacup. She immerses herself in the healing properties of herbs, particularly their ability to work in concert through the tea blends she’s been developing for years.

Based in Scotts Mills, Duvall grows herbs and pours her storehouse of knowledge into every cup. There’s something for what ails you – choose from “Slumbering Nights,” “Help me to Smile again” and “Do You Remember?”

“People relate,” she said, “and I enjoy connecting with them.”

And she can’t imagine a better place for a tea tasting than a twinkling Christmas forest.

“They are putting a lot of effort into it,” she said, “You can tell it’s going to be good.”