{"id":1026,"date":"2026-07-24T16:56:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T16:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/macarenafarms.com\/from-royal-gardens-to-dahlia-floats-the-2026-global-flower-calendars-second-half\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T16:56:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T16:56:20","slug":"from-royal-gardens-to-dahlia-floats-the-2026-global-flower-calendars-second-half","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macarenafarms.com\/zh\/from-royal-gardens-to-dahlia-floats-the-2026-global-flower-calendars-second-half\/","title":{"rendered":"From Royal Gardens to Dahlia Floats: The 2026 Global Flower Calendar\u2019s Second Half"},"content":{"rendered":"

The second half of 2026 delivers an eclectic mix of royal debuts, harvest festivals, giant vegetables, and the world\u2019s largest flower parade \u2014 from a historic garden at King Charles III\u2019s private estate to a Colombian festival built on centuries of farming tradition.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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RHS Sandringham Flower Show: A Royal Estate Opens Its Gates (July 22\u201326)<\/h2>\n

The most significant transformation in British horticulture in years is unfolding this summer. In 2024, the Royal Horticultural Society announced a major overhaul of its show calendar: the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival became a biennial event, and Tatton Park shifted to once every three years. In their place, the RHS launched a touring model, debuting at Wentworth Woodhouse in 2025 and adding two new venues in 2026 \u2014 Badminton Estate in Gloucestershire, which ran July 8\u201312, and for the first time, the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, running July 22\u201326.<\/p>\n

Sandringham serves as the private country retreat of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, and the show\u2019s centerpiece reflects that connection directly. The RHS Royal Legacy Garden<\/strong>, designed by Catherine MacDonald of Landform Consultants in consultation with the King himself, explores fractals and branching patterns found in nature. Sinuous paths wind through a biodiverse mix of trees and perennials, planted with many of His Majesty\u2019s favorite species in a bold, personal color scheme.<\/p>\n

The garden pairs with Long Borders mentored by Chelsea design veteran Tom Hoblyn and a series of Show Gardens celebrating Norfolk\u2019s landscapes and progressive horticultural practices. Beyond the headline attraction, the show offers a Floral Marquee with more than 50 specialist growers, a Flower School demonstrating elaborate floristry, a Summer Fruit and Vegetable Competition for junior growers, and a \u201cLeaf Letters\u201d activity where children write messages to the King and Queen on hand-chosen foliage.<\/p>\n

At Badminton, which opened the RHS touring format two weeks earlier, Jo Thompson\u2019s Archers 75th Anniversary Garden<\/strong> delivered a standout \u2014 a scene-by-scene recreation of Bridge Farm, the fictional home from BBC Radio 4\u2019s long-running rural drama, complete with welly boots sized for each generation of characters and sweet pea seeds referencing a specific storyline. Tom Stuart-Smith\u2019s Julia Rausing Garden, at 2,400 square meters, stands as the largest show garden the RHS has ever staged. Together, Badminton and Sandringham test whether the RHS\u2019s new model can replicate the loyalty Hampton Court and Tatton Park built over decades \u2014 early reviews suggest a strong start.<\/p>\n

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Feria de las Flores: Medell\u00edn\u2019s Ten-Day Flower Festival (July 31 \u2013 August 9)<\/h2>\n

As Sandringham concludes, Colombia\u2019s biggest annual celebration begins. The 69th edition of Feria de las Flores<\/strong> runs July 31 through August 9 \u2014 ten days of concerts, classic car parades, farmers\u2019 markets, and Antioquian folk music across more than thirty locations and over a hundred public events throughout Medell\u00edn.<\/p>\n

Everything builds toward the festival\u2019s closing set piece: the Desfile de Silleteros<\/strong> on the final Sunday. Flower farmers from Santa Elena, the mountain community above the city, carry elaborate floral arrangements called silletas strapped to their backs. Some stand over three meters tall and weigh as much as 80 kilograms, built over months using dozens of flower varieties depicting Colombian landscapes and cultural symbols.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s parade is expected to include more than 500 silleteros of all ages, with dedicated categories for children and participants with disabilities. They walk a roughly 2.4-kilometer route through the city center to Plaza Mayor, where the floral monuments remain on public display for several days afterward. By most measures, it represents the single largest showcase of hand-carried floral craft anywhere in the world \u2014 a direct descendant of the region\u2019s flower-growing economy rather than a garden-design exercise, giving it a very different texture from the RHS shows or Keukenhof.<\/p>\n

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Southport Flower Show: The UK\u2019s Largest Independent Show at Its Seasonal Peak (August 20\u201323)<\/h2>\n

Back in England, late August belongs to Southport, which bills itself as the UK\u2019s largest independent flower show and has run at Victoria Park since 1924. Unlike the RHS shows, there are no members-only preview days \u2014 the show opens to everyone across all four days, drawing more than 55,000 visitors.<\/p>\n

The late-August timing is deliberate: it sits in the gap after the summer planting rush and before the autumn clear-up, meaning perennials and annuals reach their absolute seasonal peak. The Grand Floral Marquee becomes saturated with color. New for 2026 is \u201cThe Lakeside Reset,\u201d<\/strong> a redesigned water-feature area intended as a calmer counterpoint to an otherwise busy showground.<\/p>\n

Competitive classes \u2014 cut flowers, pot plants, and specialist grower exhibits \u2014 are judged by midday each day, with ribbons displayed from then on. The Garden Theatre lineup this year opens with broadcaster and horticulturist Adam Frost, continuing Southport\u2019s tradition of drawing serious gardening names alongside its family-day-out atmosphere.<\/p>\n

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Bloemencorso Zundert: The World\u2019s Largest Flower Parade Returns (September 6\u20137)<\/h2>\n

In the Netherlands, autumn opens with one of the most singular events on this list. Bloemencorso Zundert<\/strong>, held in the small North Brabant town on the first weekend of September, is built entirely around a single flower: the dahlia.<\/p>\n

Twenty neighborhood teams spend the whole year cultivating dahlia fields \u2014 around eight million blooms are used in total, some six million grown locally in Zundert itself. In the final \u201cStick Week\u201d before the parade, they attach the flowers by hand onto enormous steel-and-papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 float structures that can reach 19 meters long and 9 meters high.<\/p>\n

The floats parade through town on Sunday afternoon, judged by an independent jury for the year\u2019s best design. A public exhibition day on Monday lets visitors get close enough to appreciate the sheer density of flowers involved \u2014 from a distance, the most accomplished floats are detailed enough that many visitors don\u2019t immediately register that the entire surface is made of living dahlias rather than paint or fabric. Founded in 1936 and now recognized on the Netherlands\u2019 national inventory of intangible cultural heritage, it remains the largest flower parade anywhere in the world, built entirely by volunteers rather than professional exhibitors.<\/p>\n

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Malvern Autumn Show: The UK\u2019s Biggest Harvest Celebration (September 25\u201327)<\/h2>\n

Closing out the season proper, the Malvern Autumn Show<\/strong> returns to Three Counties Showground in Worcestershire for its 30th-plus edition, positioning itself less as a flower show in the Chelsea mold and more as a full harvest festival. Alongside RHS floral displays and more than a hundred \u201cGrow to Show\u201d competitive classes for cut flowers, succulents, fruit, and vegetables, the show\u2019s best-known fixture is the CANNA UK National Giant Vegetables Championship<\/strong>, where competitive growers chase Guinness World Records titles with marrows, giant green beans, super-sized sunflowers, and the show\u2019s perennial headline act: enormous pumpkins.<\/p>\n

It serves as a fitting bookend to a flower-show year that, across every continent, kept circling back to the same idea: gardens and growers responding to season, place, and community rather than working against them. Malvern\u2019s giant vegetables and Zundert\u2019s dahlia floats sit at one end of that spectrum, built from months of unglamorous cultivation; Sandringham\u2019s royal borders and Southport\u2019s peak-season marquees sit at the other. Between them, they cover most of what a flower lover could want from an autumn.<\/p>\n

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Worth Watching For<\/h2>\n

Regional chrysanthemum and dahlia society shows run through October and into November across the UK \u2014 Bishop Auckland\u2019s long-running Late Chrysanthemum Show typically falls in early November. As ever with outdoor events on this scale, most shows remain weather-dependent. Given how volatile 2026 has already proven for UK growers, with a wet, record-warm June following a deluge-heavy January, expect late-summer and autumn show reports to include as much discussion of irrigation and heat-stressed bedding plants as of the blooms themselves.<\/p>\n

hk flower show 2025<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second half of 2026 delivers an eclectic mix of royal debuts, harvest festivals, giant vegetables, and the world\u2019s largest flower parade \u2014 from a historic garden at King Charles III\u2019s private estate to a Colombian festival built on centuries of farming tradition. RHS Sandringham Flower Show: A Royal Estate Opens Its Gates (July 22\u201326) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macarenafarms.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macarenafarms.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macarenafarms.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macarenafarms.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macarenafarms.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/macarenafarms.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macarenafarms.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macarenafarms.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macarenafarms.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}