Miracle Garden Dubai at Night

Was there ever a garden more aptly named? The Miracle Garden Dubai at night is one of freshest and most eye catching way to spend an evening in the United Arab Emirates. Roughly 45 million flowers; shaped, sculpted, watered and guarded to an inch of their lives. If you like flowers, you’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven..

It’s a miracle…

The person that thought up the Dubai Miracle Gardens was definitely having a blue sky thinking kind of day. Talk about thinking out of the box… Check out this video and see exactly what kind of crazy I mean.

The world’s biggest natural garden

Ok, the concept itself isn’t that controversial; in theory a garden of this size just needs a big budget, a decent garden designer and a large space. They do something just as ambitious at Chelsea Flower show each year with only a few weeks to work with.

The world’s brightest city oasis?

But no. This isn’t just the world’s biggest natural garden. It is the world’s biggest natural garden built in a desert city. It is the world’s biggest natural garden built in a desert city that has no easy water supply apart from the sea. It is the world’s biggest natural garden built in a desert city that has no easy water supply apart from the sea, and plonked in full sunshine just beside a seven lane motorway. The miracle is that the guy or gal who came up with this crazy idea didn’t get laughed out of the office and the bank.

But then this is Dubai; where the unexpected, the implausible or the downright impossible tends to rise up into the sky right in front of your eyes about every ten minutes or so. This is the city that built a ski dome complete with penguins and chair lift to cool tourists down in summer when it could have merely sold them an ice cream or a blue slush. This is totally consistent with our experience of the Dubai bubble.

Garden on a motorway

So unsurprisingly this freshly watered oasis in Dubai’s parched landscape is a bit of a tourist attraction. Several people mentioned it to us when we were planning our trip. But it’s not as much of an attraction as you might think. It’s not located at the posh Jumeirah Beach or on the famous Palm Island. It’s not in a mall, which pretty much everything else touristic in Dubai seems to be. There are few signs apart from the one that comes too late, when you are six lanes away from the lane you want to be on to exit the motorway to get there. And it’s in a far flung corner of the city known as the Wild West. Sorry, I meant Dubailand; a strange place that looks like it wants to be Disneyland, but is more like the deserted fairgrounds that Scooby Doo and Shaggy used to frequent.

A vertical record

But yes, it is undoubtedly a miracle. Forty five million flowers. 72,000 square metres of floral decadence. Hearts, stars, pyramids, towers, umbrellas, peacocks, clocks, hoops and a giant birthday area. You half expect to see Alice and the white rabbit dashing around. It’s a record breaking miracle too; according to The Guinness Book of Records (which is called upon to adjudicate so much in Dubai it has an office in the city) it is officially the world’s ‘largest vertical garden.’ It even has a petal coated Burj Khalifa. The long term plan is that the displays will change each season but I suspect this 18 metre homage to the world’s tallest tower (also in Dubai of course) might be an annual staple.

The power behind the flowers

The gardens have been developed by landscaping company Akar. In a stroke of marketing genius, they first opened on Valentines day 2013. And they are said to be watered by a clever system using waste irrigation. Which doesn’t sound very nice, but then neither does compost, when you think about it. On Trip Advisor, there are a few complaints about the state of it in May, when the sun has had a chance to really do its stuff in the region, and the attraction closes altogether in peak summer. But when we go in late April, it is extraordinary.

Visiting the Miracle Gardens

If you make a visit here, consider leaving it till late in the day; it is far less crowded meaning you be able to take pictures next to some of the horticultural gems rather than the meandering crowds. Opening hours are 9am-9pm on weekdays and 9am-11pm in the weekends, in season. We arrived about 6pm and had the car park to ourselves. Check the Dubai Miracle Gardens website for latest details and admission prices. If you tire easily in the heat or want to treat the kids, you can get a little electric golf cart taxi to give you a tour.

It’s in the Miracle Garden that we meet the only native of Dubai we come across on our trip to the UEA. (over 75% of Dubai residents come from elsewhere.) Fatima is a fan of the UK and rather enjoys an annual trip to Leicester. Truly this a garden filled with miracles.

Disclosure Note: We visited Dubai in a collaboration with Expedia, researching, experiencing and capturing in words, pictures and video something of what the region has to offer families visiting the United Arab Emirates. Expedia helped us reach, research and stay in the UAE. The itinerary, experience, videography, photography, views and opinions remain, as ever, editorially entirely our own. Check out all our Dubai and UAE Season of posts and discover more about the area.