Chiang Mai Flower Festival 2010

Date: 5-7 February 2010
Venue: Buak Haad Park
The annual Chiang Mai Flower Festival is the biggest flower festival in Thailand, a spectacular celebration, set in Chiang Mai’s Buak Haad Park. If you are obsessed with beautiful flowers and decorative plants, this is the festival for you. Experience these beautiful flower-decorated floats and a magnificent tapestry of floral splendor that blankets the land. There are also agricultural exhibitions, floral contents, and product sales by local groups of housewives.

A highlight of the festival is the grand parade that attracts sponsoring companies and organizations that beautify floats with elaborate flower decorations, presenting an eco-tourism message or just simply stealing the hearts of spectators with their vivid colors and beauty. The parade leads up to the annual beauty competition to crown the city’s flower queen, who represents the flower growers and exporters as an ambassador of good will.

Home and garden lovers discover Chiang Mai is a February showcase for exotic orchids, flowering plants and blooms that thrive in the northern valley’s temperate cool season. Particularly during the cool season months, mid-November through to February, this northern province justifies its title “Rose of the North”. But for flower lovers, who flock to this annual festival, 5 to 7 February in the town’s Buak Haad Park, there is far more to the town’s garden reputation than the impressive display of elegant roses.

Since 1977 when the annual festival was inaugurated, it has earned a reputation on par with similar events such as Japan Sakura Flower Festival and the Netherlands’ flower parades. This was further enhanced by the successful flower expo in 2006. Due variations of climate and its mountain landscapes, the Chiang Mai Flower Festival presents a diversity of blooms and flowers. Many of them, originally imported from temperate climes such as carnations, chrysanthemum, tulips, are displayed side-by-side with tropical flowers including exotic orchids.