On Saturday, Kenya successfully organised its first ever flower festival event.
![Graça Machel was born in 1945 [CGTN]](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg'%20width%3D'100'%20height%3D'100'%20data-ring-placeholder%3D'1'%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E "Graça Machel was born in 1945 [CGTN]")
The colourful event was held at the Lord Erroll hotel in Runda, Nairobi and brought together flower enthusiasts from across the country.
The event themed “Bloom in Bravery,” showcased an array of flowers grown in the country, with 20 exhibitions. Exhibitions included floral designs, flower art installations as well as recycled bottles now turned to flower vases.
Rosemary Kimunya, is the brainchild of the event and said her goal is to highlight the blooming sector, from newcomers to one of the oldest flower growers Kenya has to offer.
“We wanted the florists to shine, we wanted them to showcase their art, we wanted the growers to be part of this so for them it was not necessarily selling but showcasing what we grow in Kenya and for us that is really humbling,” said Rosemary, who took a little under a year to organise the festival.
Ms. Kimunya hopes the festival will grow and ordinary Kenyans will come to embrace the culture.
“Kenyans need to develop the culture of giving flowers to each other instead of getting all what is grown here taken to other countries,”
Why flowers is a big deal for Kenya
Kenya is arguably the world’s flower garden and annually exports tonnes of freshly cut flowers to all corners of the world, more so to Europe.
Currently, Kenya is the world's third exporter of cut flowers and the festival signaled a key milestone in the country’s horticulture industry. The EU is Kenya’s biggest market consuming 66% of the flowers. Apart from EU and Australia Kenya’s other key markets are Japan and China while efforts to enter Russia, Turkey, South Korea and India are ongoing.
Horticulture is one of the country’s top foreign exchange earners and its earnings grew by 33 per cent from Sh115 billion ($1.15 billion) in 2017 to hit Sh153 billion ($1.53 billion) in 2018, effectively becoming Kenya’s number three top foreign exchange earners.
More than 500,000 people in the country depend on the trade according to the Kenya Flower Council.
The Kenya Flower Festival not only celebrated flower enthusiasts, it also showcased floral art in support of Breast Cancer Awareness, as well as a breast cancer screening on site to mark the cancer month.
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