How It Gets Made: Floral Installations at Bellagio's Conservatory

Emma Franke, VirtuosoHotels

Majesty: The Grandeur of Nature features hands inspired by Venice's Building Bridges.

Luis García

The masterminds behind the resort's on-site garden of delights on creating those drama-for-days displays.

Welcome to We Love Las Vegas, a collection of stories celebrating all things Sin City.

For Lea Jonic, project manager of Bellagio’s Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, there’s nothing better than a quiet moment among her living works of art. “My favorite time to be there is at 6 or 7 a.m., when it’s completely empty,” she says. “I think most people walk in and don’t realize why they love it so much. I love knowing the entire story behind how it plays out.”

Jonic works with Ed Libby, the Conservatory’s designer and artistic director, to bring the Vegas resort's indoor displays to life, arranging up to 20,000 plants at a time – along with scents, lighting, and music – to create five immersive experiences each year, just steps from Bellagio’s lobby. While each show cycles through about 150,000 potted plants, materials from the display are often reused in floral arrangements throughout the hotel and all the flora is later composted

The ever-evolving display and Ed Libby.

Luis García

“For its entire run, the display has to look exactly the way it does when it opens, if not better,” Libby says. Each installation evolves during its season. Tulips, for example, start tightly budded and grow more glamorous by the day as they open. On-site gardeners begin watering and swapping out fresh plants around 5 a.m. each day, while others at an off-site greenhouse care for plants between uses. 

Libby and Jonic use natural building blocks wherever possible, often finding the right look in unexpected places. “You could walk past a 25-foot-tall lion and never know that it’s made out of grass seed and pampas grass,” Libby says. “Or that its green eyes are parts of abalone shells.” Zebras’ noses materialize from pounded nori, and flamingos from pink moss. Nature’s color palette often needs little alteration.

When it comes to construction, water presents the team’s greatest challenge. “All of Bellagio’s water comes from a private well, so we don’t pull from the city’s potable water for the conservatory, and we recycle all the water on property,” Jonic says. During the building phase for each display, plumbers and electricians arrange the water features before the gardeners begin planting. Turning on the waterfalls and filling the ponds is the final step before a new installation opens for public viewing. “Finding out at the last minute whether the water will do what we expect is nerve-racking,” Libby says.

“Water does what it wants to do,” Jonic adds.

Plaques throughout the display inform visitors about the plant life in each scene.

Luis García

For the summer 2023 exhibit, Libby and Jonic expanded on spring’s Enchanted Garden theme with Majesty: The Grandeur of Nature. The centerpiece, a 28-foot-tall pair of hands inspired by Venice’s Building Bridges sculpture, represents Mother Nature. Scents of honeysuckle, lemon, petitgrain, crushed greens, orange blossom, lily of the valley, hyacinth, and white musk fill the air. Travelers can ask their Virtuoso advisors to reserve brunch or dinner at the new six-person Garden Table, situated under rustling willow trees. 

Majesty: The Grandeur of Nature will be on display through September 9, 2023. 

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