Have you ever noticed how much people love looking at flowers?
I hadn’t really thought about it myself until recently, when I found myself wandering around FLOWERS: A Journey Between Worlds at Expo Tel Aviv, marvelling at millions of flowers transformed into everything from giant animals to fantasy worlds.
It got me thinking. Flower shows are actually a bit of a thing – and they have been for a very long time.
The British, naturally, have turned it into something of an institution. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show has been held at the Royal Hospital Chelsea since 1913 and is now one of the world’s best-known flower shows. Across the Atlantic, Philadelphia got started even earlier, holding its first flower show in 1829.
Australians are pretty keen on them too. Coming from Melbourne, I thought I knew flower shows. We have the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show, where serious gardeners wander around inspecting landscaping, prize blooms and elaborate show gardens with the sort of concentration normally reserved for property auctions and football finals.
Sydney has its own long flower-show history. The Sydney Royal Flower & Garden Show dates back to 1929, while the Royal Agricultural Society was holding competitions as far back as 1869 – although back then the things being judged included silkworms, so clearly the definition of a good day at the Show has evolved.
But Israel, inevitably, does things a little differently.
FLOWERS: A Journey Between Worlds, at Expo Tel Aviv, contains more than three million flowers arranged across five themed worlds: Water, Galaxy, Mirrors, Fairy Tales and Amusement.
I tried to imagine what three million flowers actually looked like, but I couldn’t. I just kept walking through rooms full of them, wondering where on earth they had all come from.
The Israeli FLOWERS story is relatively young. The first edition opened at Expo Tel Aviv during Passover in 2024, with more than two million flowers, most flown in from overseas alongside Israeli-grown blooms. More than 150,000 people reportedly came to see it.
Two years later it is back, bigger again, with another 1,000 square metres added to the exhibition space.
The current show is produced by Banda Productions together with Hadran Entrepreneurship and Production, Bimot and Recreation. Frida Pablo is the flower-show designer, Keren Tzach is responsible for the exhibition’s design and planning, and Gil Teichman is behind the multimedia. Around 50 Israeli floral designers reportedly worked for weeks constructing the displays.
The flowers have escaped their vases.
They have become fish, swans, cats, planets, enormous fantasy landscapes and – inevitably – a gigantic orange octopus with sprawling blue tentacles. Nearby is a clownfish constructed from orange and white blooms.
There is a carousel smothered in flowers, a storybook village, a witch and strange illuminated botanical planets. Then there are mirrors multiplying the displays, presumably because somebody looked at three million flowers and thought: yep, not enough.
Keeping three million flowers looking cheerful through a Tel Aviv summer is something of a science experiment.
Some flowers are tougher than others. Chrysanthemums and carnations, for example, are known for their relatively long vase life. Heat, on the other hand, is no friend to cut flowers, which helps explain why the exhibition is kept so cold that the organisers actually suggest bringing something warm to wear.
Behind every gigantic floral octopus lies a surprisingly serious exercise in refrigeration, hydration and keeping bacteria at bay.
The mechanics are fascinating too. Many of the flowers are kept fresh in water-soaked floral sponges, meaning the designers have to think not only about colour and shape but about weight and engineering. I read that apparently one enormous suspended installation presented such a challenge that dried and preserved flowers had to be used instead.
And then there was my personal favourite. Among millions of blooms competing for attention sat a Nepenthes, or tropical pitcher plant. It wasn’t particularly colourful or enormous. It simply ate things. Insects slip into its hanging pitchers and are digested by fluid inside. I loved it immediately – and later learnt that Nepenthes grow in Australia too.
Perhaps this says something about me, but amid three million beautiful flowers, my favourite was the one that ate insects.
There were proteas, bottlebrushes and wonderfully fluffy flowering gums that transported this Melbourne girl briefly home.
Israel is a country the outside world has become accustomed to seeing through a very particular visual vocabulary: soldiers, protests, hostage posters, politicians, sirens and funerals.
Those images tell real stories, but they are not the entire story.
There are also families wandering through a fantasy garden in Tel Aviv, children staring open-mouthed at fish made from thousands of flowers, and grown women who had clearly understood the assignment better than I had, arriving in full fairy dresses with magic wands. I was regretting leaving mine at home.
At the end was a flower-crown-making room.
There is probably an age at which one is supposed to lose interest in making paper crowns. Apparently I haven’t reached it.
I made mine, put it on and walked happily back out into Tel Aviv looking like a slightly overgrown flower fairy who had taken a wrong turn somewhere.
It occurred to me on the way home that flowers don’t last very long. Maybe that’s part of why we use them for the big moments – love, grief, weddings, funerals and new beginnings.
And after everything Israel has been through, I liked the simple fact that this cool and colourful venue was filled with flowers, families and a bit of silliness.
Okay, I get that it doesn’t make the hard things go away. But for a few floaty hours, I could see that they aren’t the whole story either.
And if you’re going to make that point in Israel, you may as well do it with three million flowers and a giant octopus.
FLOWERS: A Journey Between Worlds runs at Expo Tel Aviv until 29 August 2026. If you’re in Tel Aviv this week, there are only a few days left to see it.
