This post may contain affiliate links

The Flower Carpet was the reason I booked this trip to Brussels. I found out about this a couple of years ago and my mum and I missed seeing this by a couple of days. This has been in our plans for the last two years. When we first arrived in Brussels, we went to the Grand Place and they were just starting to set up.

More than 100 volunteer gardeners put together this giant floral puzzle in less than four hours. The day before the opening, the spaces between the floral motifs are filled in using rolls of sod. The flowers are so closely-packed, 300 per square metre, over 600,000 flowers that they can not be blown away, and indeed they create their own micro climate.

Every other summer, on the weekend of August 15th, the Flower Carpet offers a chance to stroll across the Grand-Place, a jewel of Gothic architecture, to inhale the fragrant scent of the begonias and admire its details. This extraordinary spectacle is made complete by a visit to the balcony of the Town Hall, which offers a wide-angle view of the work. This is where we viewed this from, the queue to visit that had not prebooked was ridiculous.

The theme of the Flower Carpet this year. Like Brussels, the state of Guanajuato in central Mexico has a long tradition of large carpets. It is in the town of Uriangato, in the south of the region, that the festivities reach each year their apogee, during “La Octava Noche”. On this occasion, the inhabitants decorate the streets for several kilometres spreading small carpet of sawdust. It is the largest ephemeral art event in central Mexico. It is the first Latin-American carpet on Brussels soil.

This was the highlight of my trip to Brussels, it was amazing to see this in the flesh. More information can be found at the official website just remember to use google translate as it is in french.