Have you had the chance to visit our new holiday display, Birdsong & Boughs: A Holiday Migration?

The holiday display is an excellent opportunity to get together with your friends and family and come warm up at The Leaf while also experiencing the full festive vibes our display has to offer.  

This display combines the vibrant beauty of holiday greenery with the calming sounds of birds, offering visitors a chance to experience the season through nature's migrations. Playful features, such as bird species display paired with contrasting plants, colourful birdhouses, a swan mosaic, and oversized eggs, create a whimsical yet purposeful ambiance emphasizing conservation and sustainability.

Our Horticulture team worked tirelessly on this display change for five days. This included dismantling the Yasuragi: Gardens of Japan display, reconfiguring the space by moving over 18,000 kilograms of bricks, planting, and decorating.

At The Leaf, we have 750 beautiful poinsettias planted throughout for the holiday display—a mix of pink, white, and, of course, red.

Five hundred decorative birds are scattered throughout the Hartley and Heather Richardson Tropical Biome, the Mediterranean Biome, and the Babs Asper Display House. This includes 160 hummingbirds, 108 sparrows, and 84 cardinals. We have also repurposed many of our origami cranes, which were previously made by our wonderful volunteer team for the previous display.

With our volunteers' help, we built 45 wooden birdhouses. These birdhouses will all be placed across the Park in the future, hopefully becoming homes to the many species of birds that live in our vast outdoor spaces.

There are also 14 beautifully decorated holiday trees spread across the biomes, with many of them decorated with colours specific to different species of birds. The other themed trees include one made entirely from tropical plants and another from birdhouses.

Have you ever seen a wreath constructed primarily of succulents? There are seven to be seen in the Mediterranean biome. The wreaths were all made last year and have lived in the greenhouse until now. Each large wreath consists of 100 tiny succulents called Sempervivum, a group of plants in the Crassulaceae family. They are more commonly known as “hens” and “chicks.” Learn how the wreaths were made, step by step, by clicking here.

There is still plenty of time to visit Birdsong & Boughs: A Holiday Migration, on now until January 12. The Leaf is open daily from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm. Click here to learn more about the display and purchase your tickets.