Flower tourism is incredibly popular, and many countries use their own natural resources to draw millions of people to lesser-known cities and towns every year. Even many iconic travel destinations will boast about their rainforest, natural parks, and flower, corsages and boutonnieres festivals. If you’re looking for a unique floral experience during your travels, this list has you covered. Do you know what the best Destinations for Flower Tourism are? Take a look at this list of four places to visit if you are a flower lover.
The Top 4 Destinations for Flower Tourism
Australia – Golden Wattles
The Acacia Pycnantha, also called the golden wattle, is a tree native to southeastern Australia. This small tree, which grows between 3 and 8 meters, has dark brown bark and gorgeous gold flowers. Although it was initially found in Australia, it is now considered a weed in many other countries. Still, this flower has a cultural heritage that begs exploring in the outback.
Besides the golden wattles, you can find many other stunning Australian native flowers like the desert flame, grevillea, Canberra bells, lilly pulley, and waxflower. If you can’t make it down to Australia to pick wax flowers for yourself, you can send these flowers from The Bouqs co to yourself instead. The peak growing season for most wildflowers ranges from November to May.
France – Iris
The iris or the fleur-de-lis has been an official representative of France since the 12th century and is used as a national emblem. It’s usually purple (but sometimes pink, blue, and red) pedals make the flower appear like it’s dancing and changing colors, which is one of the reasons why the Greek took notice by naming it after their word for “rainbow.”
The beautiful French countryside has its fair share of beautiful florals, such as lilies, the rosemary bush, red poppy, cacti cours saleya, gourdon flowers, purple flower, gerberas, Christmas poinsettia, Castile, and more. France has multiple growing seasons because of the different climates in the region, so expect flowers from February to October.
Netherlands – Tulips
Despite what many believe, tulips did not come from Holland but actually comes from Hungary, where it traveled through the Ottoman Empire to Turkey. This stunning spring-blooming perennial is a large standing flower with up to four pedals. Tulips come in any color you can think of, which the Netherlands shows off every year during their annual Tulip Festival.
There are a large among of flowers you can see in the Dutch countryside or within city limits, including the anemone, common daisy, jasmine, poppy, rose(black baccara rose is very popular), lily, aster, iris, pink flower, lavender, violet, chrysanthemum, and more. The Netherlands has a winter that lasts from 4-6 months, and their growing season is typically May to August.
Japan – Cherry Blossom
Japan has two national flowers: the cherry blossom and the chrysanthemum, but the cherry blossom is more commonly associated with this country. The cherry blossom tree produces light to dark pink petals that fall and layer the ground. These trees sprout small edible cherries. Japan often gives this tree to many countries as a present to welcome peaceful times.
Japan has plenty of unique trees and plants that grow around the country include ume blossoms (for plum trees), wisteria, canola, creeping phlox, nemophila flowers, roses, poppies, Japanese iris, pink lotus, sunflowers, hydrangeas, and more. Japan has a wide range of climates in their country, so you can likely find flowers in various locations throughout the year.
South Africa – Protea
The unique-looking protea is a flower that resembles an artichoke but typically comes in reds and yellows rather than green. They are considered one of the oldest flowers on the planet and date back to 300 million years ago. The name signifies Proteus, the son of Poseidon, and is named after him because of the proteas’ shape-shifting qualities and various colors.
South Africa has many flowers that enhance the country’s natural beauty and diversity, including the blood lily, day waterlily, goat’s foot, cape eelgrass, leopard orchid, pineapple flower, river crinum, soutbossie, wild dagga, and much more. Similar to Australia, South Africa is in the Southern Hemisphere and has a floral growth period from November to May.