The highly anticipated, Flower Carpet event has been cancelled this year. The City of Brussels has taken several decisions in order to best respect the measures of the federal government in the fight against the virus.
Instead of the flower carpet, this year this Saturday 15 August from 10 pm, there will be a special projection of the Brussels Flower Carpet, which you will also be able to follow online via Facebook Live.
The Flower Carpet is a bi-annual event that takes place at the Grand Place. It is 70 m long and 24 m wide, and composed of 1,680 m2 of begonias, dahlias, grass and bark.
The first Flower Carpet of Brussels was created in 1971 and has been a showstopper every two years on the Grand-Place since 1986.
History of the first Flower Carpet in Grand-Place (1971)
This was the work of the landscape architect Etienne Stautemas, born in Zottegem in 1927. A graduate of the Horticultural College of Ghent, he began to create flower carpets in the early 1950´s. Simpler, smaller, these “rugs” were primarily composed of begonias which he loved and with which he worked ever since. After years of testing and calculations, the team of Etienne Stautemas, together with designer Mark Schautteet, imposed itself as the specialist in the creation of immense flower carpets, with sophisticated colours and complicated designs. The team went on to create more than 180 carpets, in Ghent, Bruges, Cologne, Luxembourg, Paris, London, Amsterdam, The Hague, Vienna, Valencia and even Buenos Aires and Columbus (Ohio). But “nowhere else is the carpet as magnificent and distinguished as on the ancient and unique Grand-Place of Brussels”.