Dubai Miracle Garden Tickets and Tours | GetExperience.com

Dubai Miracle Garden opened on Valentine's Day 2013 in Dubailand, out beyond the built-up city. It covers 72,000 square metres and the owners put the flower count at around 150 million. Nothing here is planted in beds.

What is actually built here

The flowers are hung on frames, so the garden reads as sculpture rather than horticulture. None of it is subtle. Arches, tunnels, hearts and peacocks fill most of it, and a few set pieces do the heavy lifting.

• The A380. A full-size Emirates airframe covered in flowers, and the reason half the photographs from here look identical.
• Mickey Mouse. An 18-metre topiary that took the Guinness record in 2018 for the tallest supported sculpture of its kind.
• The Butterfly Garden. Next door, in climate-controlled domes, ticketed on its own or together with the garden.
• The irrigation. Drip lines fed with treated waste water, which is the only reason a flower garden survives in this climate.

How long it takes

An hour to two hours. It is entirely about the photographs, and the design assumes as much. There is a food court and shaded seating; the seating fills fast.

What sells here is the ticket itself. You can buy entry alone, or entry with a car out and back. That second option matters more than it sounds, this far from town.

Practical

• It closes. The garden shuts for the summer and reopens in the autumn, and the exact dates move with the heat each year. Check before you travel, because the closure catches people out every June.
• Hours to go. Just after opening, or the last two hours before dusk. The middle of the day is hot, crowded and badly lit.
• Shade. Very little of it on the paths, and the flower tunnels are not as cool as they look.
• Distance. Thirty to forty minutes by taxi from Downtown, with no station within reach, so agree the return as well.
• Weekends. Busy enough to queue at the entrance.