LIVE at the Arboretum! With Dave Forehand and Guy Bruggeman
Bruce Bleakley
This is your Captain speaking. Welcome aboard, everyone!
I’m Bruce Bleakley and I’ll be your pilot for this week’s flight of the Love Field Stories podcast.
This week, our guests were live from the Dallas Arboretum! With Dave Forehand, Vice President of Gardens at the Arboretum, and Love Field’s own Guy Bruggeman, Manager of Art and Programming.
If you want to be part of the live conversation next time, head over to the Dallas Love Field Facebook or YouTube page every other Tuesday at 12:30 pm central.
One last thing before we take off…
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And now we’ve been cleared for take off. I’ll turn the microphone over to Dave Forehand and Guy Bruggeman.
Guy Bruggeman
Hello everyone. Welcome to Love Field stories. I’m guy Bruggeman, manager of Art and programming at Dallas Love Field on Love Field Stories. We Share stories, memories and experiences about our favorite airport and its impact on the people of North Texas.
Dave Forehand
And I’m Dave Forehand, Vice president Gardens for the Dallas Arboretum. And you’re here in our beautiful Christmas Village. You may hear some noise around behind me. We’re still getting ready. So that’s just people getting it polished up for our grand private opening ceremony.
Guy Bruggeman
So today we’re talking about our favorite time of the year, the holiday season.
Dave Forehand
that’s right.
Guy Bruggeman
And some of the wonderful things to do and see in Dallas.
Dave Forehand
Yep. And there’s plenty of those things here at the Dallas Arboretum I just mentioned are Christmas Villages German inspired has over 20 little shops. There’s a toy store. There’s a beer garden where you can actually buy a really good sausage plate. Gosh, there’s a lot going on. Get a beverage in there as well. Lots of things to do in here. We have a scavenger hunt for kids.
Guy Bruggeman
Nice.
Dave Forehand
It’s really, really, really fun as well. So I think if people come out to visit, they’re going to enjoy. When people come, they have to have a Time ticket to go on the reservation. We don’t have walk up purchase anymore.
Guy Bruggeman
Okay, important.
Dave Forehand
But people can pick. It’s just a special day that they want to come, but also have a night of it. Here then the governor’s Cuts function by Alliant Energy, and its really cool as well. See the million twinkle lights in the trees.
Guy Bruggeman
That’s a lot of lights. So first, let’s talk a little bit about the history of things. How old are you again?
Dave Forehand
Arboretum is around about 35 years old, give or take. It started because it slowly transitioned from a city park, property city of Dallas Park property, to the DABS, Dallas, Arboretum, Botanical Society, Incorporated like managed. Okay, it’s still city owns this, the city-owned property. So it’s a great private partnership. So we started doing a little bit of a Christmas traditions. Even back then was about 20 years ago, we were inherited from Harrington family. A really nice collection of nativities has been collected from around the world.
Guy Bruggeman
Well, we’re a hundred four years old. We just turned 104 in October, but our art and programming hasn’t really been around as much as that. So for us, we just started about 2015. We started our holiday music series was actually how we kicked off our programming portion of this. We started out with about three or four acts, and then it’s been slowly built up over the course of time. One of them is the Merry Band of Christmas. They’re actually the Irving Alumni High School band. Now they changed her name to Merry Band at Christmas, because they’ll let anybody in their brass section. Started out with about 14. At that time, we didn’t even have the stage. We just put them next to the Christmas tree by the ticketing hall. And then now they’re about up to 40 different musicians that play. They come out annually. It’s been a couple challenging years for us. Imagine the same with you with some challenges that we faced with with the covid-19 here. But sounds like you’re getting back till figured out how to work through it.
Dave Forehand
And now for us, for pretty much back way we were before with the things, but because we were outside now excited to park. It was a little easier for us to still figure out how to make things work during the covid time.
Guy Bruggeman
Yeah, we still got those challenges. We have a federal mask mandate that we have have to adhere to. So our performances are still down on. We are doing some bookings for the holiday season this year, but pretty much most of the musicians that are performancing that we have are instrumental versions, because they have to wear a mask. And it’s a little bit challenging to belt out songs and stuff with masks on stuff too.
Dave Forehand
That is different. I think I even had to give a talk with the mask on one time, which is really a lot of thing that have to do with getting a little bit better. Yeah. So when you come to the Arboretum for Holly, you’ll not only see this Christmas Village, but we have the 12 Days of Christmas displays awesome of seventh year. There were 30 to 40 foot glass Victorian gazebos that highlight the song 12 Days of Christmas as you walk through parts of the garden. And that’s a great exhibit. People love that. So combination of that with the Christmas Village. It’s nice with the house decorated.
Guy Bruggeman
Sounds like there’s a lot to do here for the next couple months.
Dave Forehand
And in fact, talking about lights, it’s the first time we’re going to have it on display, but it’s a 42 two foot dancing Christmas tree. So a giant tree with LED lights that can move to like sounds of the music. So it’s a whole set of different songs that play in the lights, spin up the tree and down. I think that’s going to be a hit. I think kids and adults all are going to love it.
Guy Bruggeman
That sounds pretty good. Our trees getting a little raggedy. We have our holiday tree lighting ceremony coming up in the first of December, but so maybe I can talk the director into getting us a one of those fancier trees.
Dave Forehand
That’d be great. Maybe a mini version for the terminal.
Dave Forehand
So speaking of tree lighting. It’s always fun. When we do that, because invariably, there’s something tricky that goes on, because we have this oversized switch and it always seems like there’s this awkward lag between the switch.
Guy Bruggeman
Oh yeah, actually my co-workers know that to a tee. We’ve done- this is our fifth year, I believe, doing our tree lighting ceremony, and we’ve had a little bit of mistakes. The first first year. I was just going to plug it in because we didn’t have a remote control for it, but I couldn’t see the Director. So I was a little off-kilter on that one. The second year, I thought I’d get a little smarter, and I brought a remote control from home, tested it out. Everything worked fine. He went through his little stuff, flips the switch, and I was a little too far. I wanted to stay out of the frame of the cameras, and the remote wasn’t working. So I had to keep running closer and I kept pushing the button, and it finally triggered up. Three years ago, I did the same thing. Last year, we were fortunate where it was just done virtually. So I didn’t have to flip a switch, which was a little bit easier. So yeah, those over scale, large light switches do tend to cause a little bit of a thin stuff. So we can talk a little bit more about some of the history of stuff that we’ve done. He said that the house has been here for a while.
Dave Forehand
Yep. So the we, with the property we inherited the two historic homes, the Glorious State and Alex Camp estate. And we use both of those for holidays. You know, we’re also a place where we have a lot of private rentals. People may not not know that, although they met when they visit kind of see like weddings beginning to be set up. But we do like our peak times. We have about 450 weddings a year here at the Arboretum. So lots happening here, not only during the day when we’re open to the public, but it in the evening as well, people doing private events.
Guy Bruggeman
That’s quite a few events that you have. Our events are mostly passengers traveling. So we try to do more things to, you know, to help the passengers ease of travel and stuff. So that’s why we do focus on the series with tree lighting, music performances. We’ve actually brought in the class act tap dance company. I actually met these women on a plane to Philadelphia. They were going out to New Jersey. It’s- how to put this delicately. They’re a senior tap group. Okay? They range from 40 is the youngest to about 78 is the oldest one. They’ve come out a couple different years for us, and they actually do about a 30-minute tapped set. But they have three outfit changes during the 30.
Dave Forehand
My goodness.
Guy Bruggeman
But they are a big hit with our passengers. Then after that, even though it’s only a 30-minute set, they’ll stick around for about an hour and get photos with a bunch of the passengers that are probably new.
Dave Forehand
Where do you do tap, on your stage?
Guy Bruggeman
We have had them on the stage, but we just put them right on the floor in front of it. We’ve got the perfect terrazzo floor for tap.
Dave Forehand
Yeah.
Guy Bruggeman
Instead of having to put plywood down onto the stage because the stage is carpeted. It’s something we look forward to where hopefully they were going to be able to come out again this year to for us.
Dave Forehand
Yeah, I know they’ll be a big hit.
Guy Bruggeman
So there’s a big man, big Glockenspiel thingy back behind us.
Dave Forehand
Exactly. It’s Christmas pyramid, because this is a tradition and parts of Germany and Czech Republic, those areas they’ll build little, he’s big ones right in the Little Village Center of town center. And people have had these in their homes for hundreds of years.
Guy Bruggeman
I believe we had something similar sure that not quite that tall.
Dave Forehand
Maybe, like, like Nativity based maybe other local scenes that are built in most, who was hand carved wood for the smaller ones, and they light candles in the candles will make the propeller spin at the top from Turkey.
Guy Bruggeman
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m sure my put my mom through a lot of Torment when we had the candles lit, my brother and I would always be messing around with it. But, that’s pretty impressive.
Dave Forehand
Yeah, it’s a fun kind of centerpiece here in our village. The other thing people see when they come to visit the Bessie after Thanksgiving, the guard will be, and we’ll be in the process of planning our 500000 tulips and daffodils, and then putting pansies on top all those beds. So that’s a neat time to see that a lot of people like to watch us plant the bulb that’s amazing. Actual team complain about 25 thousand bulbs a day for. So we try to get them in the ground as quick as we can. We put plan things out, but nowhere near that size for our entrances and stuff. But yeah.
Guy Bruggeman
That’s amazing.
Dave Forehand
Not that long after they start to show their little pointy little tulip heads. And then usually around the late February 1st of March. Okay, we’ve got to limit again. And the whole season, let’s go back to that 45-foot dancing tree. Again, that’s a brand-new brand-new. Yeah, they’ll be able to see it from the other side of White Rock Lake. Okay, I haven’t quite seen where that is when I came. Got a little bit of a brief tour this today, but he’s actually behind our Alex Camp estate. That’s the white, historic home, okay. And behind there as the it’s not a natural slope. So that’s where our concert stage is okay, or we can seat about 3000 people.
Guy Bruggeman
Okay, concerts, do you do a lot of concerts?
Dave Forehand
We do. And we kick back. Now. We had not do the last year, but we’re back in full force. In fact, this year with our concerts, they just sold out immediately. Okay, everybody jumps on it because, you know, people looking for things to do. And yeah, coming to a concert and our dreams.
Guy Bruggeman
Pretty cool.
Dave Forehand
Yeah, especially Outdoors feel a little more comfortable with that.
Guy Bruggeman
What type of performances are you doing?
Dave Forehand
We just get cover bands kind of we kind of focus on what people I’d say 40 to 100 life. So it’s those bands that people remember from back in the day, like the Beatles cover. And those kind of thing.
Guy Bruggeman
Okay, excellent. Yeah, we’ve got, we’re still in the process of booking some of our performances for the holiday season. We do work closely with the Texas Music Project. They’re a nonprofit organization. They normally supply some musicians or performers. And then we also work with them because we’re city-owned, too. Just like you talked about, the airport is city-owned. So we work with the Office of Arts and Culture of the public art. There’s a community artist program. We normally borrow a couple of musicians from them, particularly one that’s been out almost eight years now. The Len Barnett and his Percussion Things. He brings out a group, they play jazz mostly. But what they also do is they spice it up a little bit during the holiday season than they play- they bring out a steel drum, and they play a kind of Reggae, Caribbean, holiday, music and stuff, too. So that’s it.
Dave Forehand
Sounds good.
Guy Bruggeman
Yeah, it’s pretty cool. It’s a really good relationship we have with the Office of Arts and Culture to bring out the local musicians.
Dave Forehand
Really cool. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been in an airport where there was anything going on like that. I don’t. Is that pretty unique to you guys?
Guy Bruggeman
It’s becoming more and more common, and most airports now, Visual Arts have been established in a lot of the airport’s. But now it’s more people are moving to performances, Performance Based stuff, musicians, theater, dance, that type of stuff. So you see more and more of that in there. And mainly it’s well, there’s a couple of issues. One that reasons we’ve got a captive audience you normally we try to recommend, especially during the holiday season, get at least to the airport 90 minutes in advance. We’ve got a lot of family members that aren’t used to familiar with traveling, and they’ve got kids and tote. And so once they get through security, we just try to entertain them. By doing that, music performances, we’ve got a button maker. 8 years ago, I came back from a conference, and I told our director that I wanted a button maker. It was the first thing I would purchase. We actually retired the button maker. We’ve probably made probably 25,000 buttons, if not more. We finally wore it out. We bought a new button maker. We set up normally near the stage, and we do art based activities with the kids, coloring pages, button making. Two years ago, we made a little reindeer out of pipe cleaners and stuff. So we just do types of fun activities for the kids and families.
Juliette Coulter
We got some questions. When will the Christmas tree lighting take place at Love Field?
Guy Bruggeman
We’re still trying to get that on the directors. Probably the second week in December, I’m hoping he I just reached out to the director, and he gave me three dates that’s available on his calendar. So we’re working, but we will definitely have our social media team promoted, because there is 30 minutes for parking for free at the airport. And so we will definitely promote that. But it’s going to be probably the second week. It’s really fast. It’s about a 30-minute ceremony. But we do offer hot cider hot go, sometimes cookies, and that kind of stuff, too.
Juliette Coulter
So, okay. And Dave, we’ve heard there’s a new beer garden here, what kinds of- What types of food will be served?
Dave Forehand
Well, it’s all German inspired food in the beer garden. It’s just over my shoulder here, and they’ll you can get a sausage plate in there, Chris different beers. And there’s a gluhwein, which is the hot wine, the mulled wine, which will be offered there were another right Reverend as well for the kids. So you can just plan on doing dinner here at the Arboretum Christmas Village. If you pick a nighttime visit.
Juliette Coulter
We have another question. How many out-of-town visitors come to the Holiday Christmas events at the Arboretum, and of course, fly through Dallas Love.
Guy Bruggeman
That’s really where the journey starts, is with us.
Dave Forehand
We have people from all over like the country that visit. We’re the number one thing to do when TripAdvisor here in the Dallas Metroplex. So we get plenty of folks. In fact, through our docents who collect signatures and the houses people come in, we’ve had people from at least 50 different countries visit. So we’re the place to come and be out side. When you’re in Dallas.
Guy Bruggeman
Well, that starts us wrapping up for the holidays. Kickoff for us is the Friday before Thanksgiving, so hopefully there’ll be lots of passengers. It looks good for us, and that means people to come visit you as well.
Dave Forehand
Fun talking to you.
Guy Bruggeman
Yeah, hope everybody enjoyed our little chat.
Dave Forehand
Yep. Thank you for watching. Stay tuned for the next episode.
Guy Bruggeman
Appreciate you guys. Thanks.
Bruce Bleakley
This is your Captain speaking. As we begin our descent into Love Field, I’d like to thank you for flying with us on the Love Field Stories podcast.
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As always, I’m your Captain, Bruce Bleakley. If you’ll please return to tray tables and seat backs to the fully upright and locked position, we’ll see you aboard our next flight in 2 weeks!
