Dubai Miracle Garden to have floral installation of Emirates A380

Emirates Airline has announced that it has teamed up with Dubai Miracle Garden to construct the “world’s largest floral installation” through a life-size version of the Emirates A380, covered in more than 500,000 fresh flowers and living plants.

When in full bloom, the aircraft structure will have a total stem count of 5mn flowers and weigh over 100 tonnes (take-off weight of an actual A380 is 575 tonnes), according to a press statement from Emirates.

The Emirates A380 installation will be on display for the public from November 27.

Boutros Boutros, divisional senior vice-president for corporate communications, marketing and brand, said: “The Emirates A380 is a statement-making aircraft that is tremendously popular with passengers around the world, and we hope that through our collaborative efforts with Dubai Miracle Garden we will inform, inspire and delight visitors through the sheer scale and beauty of the floral A380 installation.”

Abdel Naser Rahhal, co-founder and creator of Dubai Miracle Garden, added: “Having an Emirates A380 is a great achievement for Dubai Miracle Garden and we are proud to have the floral installation of the aircraft as the world’s largest floral sculpture ever built.”

The flowers and plants used for the ‘living’ Emirates A380 installation were sustainably grown and harvested over a four-month period at Dubai Miracle Garden nurseries in the UAE. The A380 installation comprises seven varieties of flowers: petunia, coleus, marigold, snapdragon, viola, geranium and gaillardia.

A medley of over 9,000 flowers and plants made up the Emirates logo, and 100,000 blossoms formed the wings, which reach over 80.27m wide.

More than 200 installation crew members worked 10 hours a day for 180 days to build, layer and mount the textural foliage on the 30-tonne steel structure that makes up the Emirates A380. The life-size installation is over 72.93m long. The fuselage stands 10.82m from the ground and the tail at 24.21m from the ground. The aircraft structure even includes moving engine fans and other key design features that capture the essence of the original aircraft design.

The installation is the “largest structure to ever be built at the garden and is set on a flowerbed of 7,460sqm, roughly 10% of Dubai Miracle Garden, the statement notes.

The Emirates A380 structure was built from recycled materials and the flowers and plants are irrigated through a drip-water system specially designed for the structure that will keep the installation hydrated and lush throughout the season.

As seen on GulfTimes  Image Credits GulfTimes