Dubai Miracle Garden

I have not visited this ... but would love to. just watched a programme about it.

Dubai Miracle Garden - Wikipedia

Dubai Miracle Garden: A Virtual Tour Of The Famous Flower Garden

 

Must be a hell of a job keeping that lot going in the heat.

 

Looks like a floral theme park complete with Disney characters.

 

The programme (a travel one) was fascinating. They close in their summer months and the entire place is watered by grey water from the city, but I don't see how it is not all withered. The plane is ace.

The last three years I worked was in the aircraft industry and our Sales Director had to go to Dubai yearly for Emirates and he hated it ... he said it was never under 50c!

 

It would seem that they water in over 750 thousands litres every night.
While it is an interesting feature of engineering, it should be noticed that the average water consuption per head in Dubai is 550 litres per day, over 95% per cent of which coming from desalinization of sea water, one of the most expensive processes to obtain fresh water.
The "miracle garden" reuses lavishly some of that very expensive water after treatment.
Seeing how the average consumption in London is 160 litres per per person, which is generally deemed too high, the main miracle seem the huge amount of money they are throwing at it :D

Personally I am more impressed with the clever low irrigation, often traditional, approaches used in many countries at similar latitudes. Results are not that flashy, granted, but they use lots of clever tricks and very little water to grow plants in very unlikely places.

 

Thank you Victoria for this thread.

I question the title of it being a natural garden. IMO to me a natural garden would apply more to a dried-up desert area, that is suddenly transformed by something like a monsoon, as often displayed in nature films.

Maintenance of such a garden display makes our eyes water. However Dubai have the money to accomplish almost whatever is required. Desalination plants are a big thing out there.

Nevertheless it certainly is a very colourful area.