Emirates A380 blooms at Dubai Miracle Garden

A new botanical wonder has taken root at the heart of the world’s largest natural flower garden in Dubai.

Emirates Airline 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 an unprecedented total stem count of five million flowers and will weigh more than 100 tonnes (take-off weight of an actual A380 is 575 tonnes).

Boutros Boutros, Divisional Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications, Marketing & 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.”

He added: “The progressive environmental initiatives and methods of building and planting the Emirates A380 installation are also in harmony with the eco-efficiency of the aircraft.” 

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.

A medley of more than 9,000 flowers and plants were used to make the iconic Emirates logo and 100,000 blossoms formed the enormous wings, which span more than 80.27 metres.

More than 200 installation crew members meticulously worked 10 hours a day for 180 days to build, layer and mount the textural foliage on the 30-tonne steel structure, which even includes moving engine fans and other key design features.

The life-size installation is more than 72.93 metres long and is the largest structure to ever be built at the garden.

It is set on a flowerbed of 7,460 square metres, roughly 10% of the Dubai Miracle Garden plot.