The festival features displays and kiosks for botanists to share the blooming harvests of their green thumbs. You will find almost every kind of flower and plant at this festival, arranged in vibrant groves or hanging pots. If you’ve ever considered getting into gardening, there’s no better place to start than here!
The Souq Waqif Flower Festival is a botanical exposition event you can visit during your visit to Qatar. This limited event ends on the 6th of February 2021 and is hosted by an inter-departmental coalition of Qatar’s branches of government, from the municipal to the federal.
Most of the botanical beauties you will find are locally grown in Qatar’s greenhouses. This year’s exposition features the largest number of nurseries participating yet, 23 botanical producers will be putting their plants on display!
Reasons to Visit the Souq Waqif Flower Festival
Nature is truly a spectacular and awe-inspiring force of beauty and when paired with the thousands of years of a tender human hand, the results are nothing short of exceptional. Despite all the ills of the world during this world Pandemic, the sight of colourful and mesmerizing plants grown with the utmost care and attention is always a sight for sore eyes.
Voltaire said: Cultivate Your Own Garden
Watching something grow from nothing is a miracle, but knowing your hands and devotion were responsible for so much beauty is truly something that sparks a timeless kind of joy and fulfilment. To be surrounded by so many other enthusiasts with a dedication to their craft is an inspiration that is hard to come by.
Variety is the Spice of Life
Witnessing the infinite evolutionary variety and intricacy in all the flowers, botanical products, plants and more are truly staggering. The Flower Festival contains a veritable multitude of exotic plants, fruit plants, floral arrangements and so much more. Whatever you need or want, you’ll find it here. There are so many, you might not even know where to start! All visitors to the Flower Festival will ultimately find something to take away though, hopefully, the beginning of a new passion for watching things grow.
One-Stop Shopping
Starting a garden can be an overwhelming experience, but at the Souq Waqif Flower Festival, you will not only have all the necessary equipment and products to get your garden started but the collective expertise of people who have been cultivating a life for dozens of years! These vendors won’t just sell you the top of the line agrarian growing implements but show you how these very same products were directly responsible for cultivating the luscious and stunning plants you see before you.
Learning Self-Sufficiency
While the peonies, violets and orchids will look marvellous and emit a wonderful aroma in your house or on your front porch, learning the secrets of growing your fresh produce is a fantastic way to save money and the environment all the while developing a healthy respect for heroes who keep our supermarkets lined with everything we need to make a great meal. There is nothing as satisfying as eating the food your hands have produced.
Admiring Bloom in the Desert
Watching something so green and fresh in a country notorious for its sandy dunes is truly a miracle of modern industrial agricultural practices and a testament to human ingenuity and adaptability. There is no truer saying that is demonstrated by the Souq Waqif Flower Festival as “When there is a will, there is a way!”. This speaks to the transformation of the world’s soul to see something so full of life emerge from the aridest and difficult climates to master; it is truly a wonder of the 21st century.
Learning to Take Care of our Planet
Gardening is a fantastic hobby when it comes to gaining a new perspective on what it takes to ensure that life on Earth not only survives but thrives. Learning about all of nature’s processes and secrets is a form of intelligence that allows you to appreciate a timeless ideal of beauty and understand why Nature is the subject of so many pieces of art, to begin with.
In the face of climate change, it’s important to be reminded of what exactly it is we are fighting for. This becomes much more imminent, visceral when you can observe the miracle of growth before your very eyes on a day to day basis. By taking care of our planet, we can see that our planet also takes care of us, offering everlasting cyclical beauty from the grassroots…
Understanding the Local Culture
When visiting a sacred space such as the Souq Waqif Flower Festival Market, you gain invaluable glimpses into the cultural driving force that inspires all these botanists to bring forth such beautiful things to life from the soil.
The Quran makes many references to the importance of gardening, but perhaps one of the most beautiful verses comes from the Surah Qaf in verses 7-11.
“And the earth – We spread it out and cast therein firmly set mountains and made grow therein [something] of every beautiful kind,
Giving insight and a reminder for every servant who turns [to Allah]
And We have sent down blessed rain from the sky and made grow thereby gardens and grain from the harvest﴿
And lofty palm trees having fruit arranged in layers
As provision for the servants, and We have given life thereby to a dead land. Thus is the resurrection.”