Brussels Flower Carpet

Recently I have been looking through and sorting old digital photos in an effort to declutter my life. As I flicked through, I realised I hadn't documented some of our holiday experiences. Today I am looking back on a small part of a life changing trip to Europe. This is the day we visited Brussels. In August 2012, we road-tripped to Switzerland. After a midnight crossing of the channel we arrived on the continent in desperate need of sleep. We woke hungry and looked at the map, I realised we were near Belgium. We decided to travel to Brussels and have Belgium waffles for breakfast.

N.B. This road trip was also before my fancy camera.

The waffles were delicious and more than satisfied our appetite.

Having been in the car for several hours we decided to explore and stretch our legs. Not far from where we parked the car, we stumbled upon a large square surrounded by beautiful buildings. I spent some time taking photos and admiring the architecture of what we later found out was the Grand Place.

On the floor of the Grand Place were thousands of flowers. We thought it was cool, took some more photos and didn't think much of it before heading on our journey. 

It was only when we arrived in Switzerland and started researching that we realised how incredibly lucky we had been.

Brussels Flower Carpet:

In Brussels there is a biennial event where the Grand Place is transformed by a flower carpet made of Begonias. It takes a year to plan, design and organise for the carpet to take place. Over one hundred experienced gardeners gather together to create the masterpiece in four hours. The flower carpet lasts four days.

The carpet measures 75 metres by 24 metres. Each square metre requires 300 begonia heads. The gardeners pack the heads so tightly that they don't blow away and they create their own microclimate.

The carpet base consists of rolls of sod which conceals sprinklers. In heat waves the sprinklers keep the flowers from decaying too quickly.

There is a different musical concert for every evening that the flower carpet is set up, a sound-and-light show, with a theme composed for each edition of the carpet.

Unfortunately we didn't see the sound-and-light show, but count ourselves incredibly lucky to have seen the flower carpet on its last day for another two years. The Grand Place alone would have been worth a visit, stumbling across the flower carpet was a bonus.