A Garden Like No Other: Bellagio’s Surreal Ode to French Elegance (Versailles in the Desert)

As you step off the polished marble floor of the Bellagio lobby into the vast 14,000-square-foot conservatory, the air shifts: warmer, perfumed, electric. The seasonal transformation is complete—the space, usually a backdrop to flowing fountains and glass chandeliers, now pulses with theatrical grandeur. Plants hum with life beneath trellised arches, moss-draped topiaries stretch like sculptures, and everywhere, color blooms with bold intent. This is Glam Menagerie: A Surrealist Summer, an immersive installation running May 24 through September 6, 2025, that marries the opulence of Baroque art and French Renaissance couture in a dreamlike horticultural odyssey.

Designed by Ed Libby and assembled by a team of 80 botanists, engineers and artists, the display transports visitors into a European garden party steeped in whimsy and excess. The vision is audacious: to suspend disbelief, to challenge perception, to envelop you in a narrative of surreal luxury.

Your journey begins at the West Bed, where a giant chessboard of real marble-patterned tiles sprawls across the floor, its pieces rendered in living topiary and moss. Two towering figures—king and queen—loom 20 feet high, planted in place like botanical monuments. At the center, a monumental chess pawn transformed into a 30-foot-tall gazebo: inside, The Garden Table awaits. Here guests can indulge in an opulent brunch by Sadelle’s ($125) or an elegant dinner curated by Forbes four-star chef Michael Mina ($195), surrounded by pastel blooms and staggering chandeliers. Nearby, a lifelike pink cockatoo swings gracefully from an arch crowned with the signature Bellagio “B,” evoking Fragonard’s The Swing. The music in this bed is light, sunlit—arpeggios on harp and celesta woven through the scent of roses and jasmine drifting in the warm hush.

From here, you drift northward, into a calmer realm. Two moss-draped giraffes stretch into the height of the ceiling, their necks entwined in a silent embrace, like guardians. Between them, Tigress Giovanna lounges upon a swing, her body clad in black-and-white couture reminiscent of French Renaissance silhouettes. The effect is unsettling, elegant: a wild beast dressed for court, reclining among cherubic fountains and lavender blossoms. The air carries muted strings and woodwinds; occasional birdcalls mimic exotic life inside the glasshouse.

A scent diffuser near the giraffes emits jasmine—something Libby calls an olfactory guidepost, a compass of memory that deepens the experience. Nearby, LED screens dissolve the walls beyond the plants with shifting optical illusions of looming statues, Baroque scrollwork, and skies that open into otherworldly horizons, stretching the limits of the space.

Turning right, you slip into the East Bed, where a wrought-iron gazebo blooms under a canopy of pink and white flowers. Beneath it, a pond shimmers, cradling four statuesque flamingos that move through mirrored ribbons of water. Antique-style lanterns embossed with the Bellagio “B” hover overhead like floating jewels. Every petal, every lantern is a note in a symphony of design, notes that carry weight, beauty, meaning.

Here, you might pause—leaning against an intricately carved balustrade that disguises itself as living hedges—listening to the pond’s ripple against the sculptural metal, smelling the moisture and greenery. It’s an intimate moment amid the extravagance.

Passing through a corridor of boxwood arches, your path leads to the South Bed. Two zebras, Sir Pierre and Lady Colette, recline beneath more Baroque chandeliers. Their stripes stand out against pastel blooms and geometrically trimmed hedges. Below, a miniature homage to the famed Fountains of Bellagio pirouettes. The water jets dance in slow sync, spotlighted by hidden LEDs, tracing arcs across stillness. Behind this watery homage, faux doors carved in faux-wood detail beckon like invitations into a painted Versailles hallway.

It’s impossible to ignore the sheer scale: 125,000 pounds of ivy, 22,000 potted trees and shrubs, 5,000 square feet of topiary, 120 linear feet of hedges, suspended lanterns, life-sized animals in fantasy attire. It’s extravagant, yes, but what resonates is the precision—the care in each placement, the foresight to build illusions among living breathing plants. You realize this isn’t spectacle alone; it’s storytelling through horticulture, illusion, scent and sound.

Behind the scenes, water conservation is a silent hero. The conservatory eschews municipal supply, instead drawing from on-site wells and recycled water, conserving this precious resource even amid blooms and sprinklers. And when the summer installation concludes, every living thing still viable will be composted locally—soil returned to the earth—ensuring nothing goes to waste.

Ed Libby, quoted multiple times in press write-ups, emphasizes that the goal wasn’t mere beauty—it was transformation. “Transporting guests into an extraordinary realm where nature and opulence intertwine, surreal art comes to life and elegance blooms with every step.” That bloom, he notes, is both visual and emotional, a compound of nostalgia, wonder, memory.

As you wander again under mirrored steel beams and glass, you notice overlooked details: a cherub’s cheek petaled by rose; a vine curling exactly around a lantern; the way piano notes soften when the ceiling clouds pass overhead. Seasonal displays at Bellagio are known to draw around 20,000 visitors daily and use more than a million plants annually. These figures aren’t just logistical—the flood of summer tourists becomes part of the narrative. Each visitor is an animal in this menagerie, each step measured, intentional.

Some linger next to the chessboard, photographing the grazing cockatoo. Others drift slowly past Tigress Giovanna, catching the glint of her high-fashion garb. The Garden Table hosts an intimate dinner party as cherry blossoms overhead sway under hidden fans. Evening guests linger late, watching light shift across petals and prisms as the conservatory’s LEDs shift focus.

Luxury travelers, including editors at FX Excursions and Global Traveler, praised the display’s theatricality and scale—the sense you are dining within a surreal painting. Social-media posts from the official Bellagio Facebook account echo that sentiment, showing video clips of glowing lanterns and swaying topiary against music, inviting guests to “step into a world where elegance meets enchantment.”

The display, while free and open 24/7, is designed for multi-sensory immersion—not a casual stroll but convertible into a curated experience. Patrons with reservations at The Garden Table enter an environment that straddles world-class dining and living theater: chandeliers overhead, blooms at eye-level, instruments playing softly under vaulted glass. It is, in effect, a Renaissance painting come to life—a whole environment shaped for mood, luxury, longing.

Cultural context seeps in: the French Renaissance, a period of refinement, interwoven with Baroque drama, the era of boldness and theatricality. Bellagio has long drawn on European inspirations—its name, its architecture evoking an Italian village; the Fiori di Como ceiling recalling the grandeur of Old World salons. In Glam Menagerie, these influences crystallize into living art, a cross-temporal festival of form.

Some critics might call it kitsch—zebra in formal wear under rococo chandeliers—but a deeper gaze reveals curatorial intelligence. The surrealism, manifested in scale juxtapositions and optical play, echoes Magritte or Dalí more than kitschy excess. And yet the horticultural backbone is firm: real plants, recycled water, composted soil. Beauty with responsibility. Fantasy with pragmatism.

Walking back toward the lobby, you sense that something has shifted. Maybe it’s the smell—jasmine still lingers—or the hush of the water. You carry with you fragments of grandeur: fluttering petal, weird elegance of giraffes, chessboard reflections. You realize the display is ephemeral, a performance staged on living canvas. In a few months it will fold into compost and memory, to return in another season, another story.

Glam Menagerie is more than decoration. It’s an assertion: that narrative, art and sustainability can intertwine beneath a glass ceiling in 2025 Las Vegas. It’s a daring gesture in a town built on illusions. But unlike neon and noise, this illusion blooms and breathes.

In that sense it is pure: not Vegas superficiality but deliberate wonder, cultivated beauty at scale—and humanity embedded in thousands of petals. It is summer distilled.

Sources:

1. Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens – Official Website https://bellagio.mgmresorts.com/en/entertainment/conservatory-botanical-garden.html

2. MGM Resorts Newsroom – Official Press Release https://newsroom.mgmresorts.com/press-releases?item=122622

3. KTNV Las Vegas – “Bellagio Conservatory invites guests to their new surreal summertime display” https://www.ktnv.com/vegas-things-to-do/bellagio-conservatory-invites-guests-to-their-new-surreal-summertime-display

4. The Hotel Guide – “Bellagio’s Conservatory & Botanical Gardens Unveils Glam Menagerie: A Surrealist Summer” https://thehotelguide.com/bellagios-conservatory-botanical-gardens-unveils-glam-menagerie-a-surrealist-summer

5. Global Traveler – “Dine Amidst Massive Garden Chess Pieces and More at Bellagio Las Vegas’ New Garden Exhibit” https://www.globaltravelerusa.com/dine-amidst-massive-garden-chess-pieces-and-more-at-bellagio-las-vegas-new-garden-exhibit

6. Las Vegas Review-Journal / Neon – “Bellagio Conservatory unveils summer display on Las Vegas Strip” https://neon.reviewjournal.com/free/bellagio-conservatory-unveils-summer-display-on-las-vegas-strip-photos-3314606

7. Credit Photos: Marie Knotts

8. Wikipedia – Bellagio (resort) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellagio_(resort)

9. Bellagio Las Vegas – Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/bellagiolasvegas/posts/step-into-a-world-where-elegance-meets-enchantment-bellagio-conservatorys-summer/1105246754981850