The world’s largest flower garden is in a very unexpected place

If you had to take a guess on the location of the world’s largest flower garden, you’d probably assume it was somewhere known as a lush farming area. California, maybe, with its wide-ranging agricultural systems? Or Hawaii, with its rich, volcanic soil and gigantic natural blooms? Perhaps somewhere in the Netherlands, a country known for its endless fields of tulips?

All good guesses, to be sure, but all wrong. The world’s largest flower garden is located somewhere you’d probably never guess: in the middle of a city in the middle of a desert in the Middle East. Dubai, to be exact.

The Dubai Miracle Garden, located in Al Barsha South, is a sight to behold. Spanning 18 acres and containing more than 45 million flowers, the garden showcases breathtaking floral sculptures and designs that change every season. This past season included entire villages constructed of flowers, blooming walkways with rainbow canopies and a full-size replica of an Airbus A380 covered in 50,000 flowers.

As you might imagine, constructing a record-breaking flower garden in the desert is no easy feat. It takes 400 people nearly two months to set up the attraction, consisting of 30 different types of flowers, including petunias, geraniums and marigolds. The Miracle Garden closes for four months out of the year, when it simply gets too hot to sustain flowers in Dubai. But when the garden is open, it relies upon eco-friendly irrigation systems to stay surprisingly eco-friendly.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhTPA3fl3d4/?taken-by=dubaimiraclegarden

The hot weather break gives the Miracle Garden staff time to come up with a plan for the next year’s over-the-top designs. It might seem impossible to top a flower-encrusted jumbo jet, but rest assured next year’s attractions will be just as wondrous.

Abdel Nasser Y. Rahhal, general manager of Akar Landscaping Services and Agriculture, told NBC that he hopes the garden will make people rethink some of their preconceived notions about Dubai as a city of skyscrapers. “I hope people will understand that this country is not only for extremes in concrete and steel,” he said. “This country is given beautiful weather for seven months …with a little care, you can get a really beautiful production.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg-ovO7lQtK/?taken-by=dubaimiraclegarden

And by the looks of the photos, it’s easy to see that beauty is undeniable.