The 7th Da Lat Flower Festival: When Flowers Reached Beyond Da Lat
The 7th Da Lat Flower Festival in 2017 marked a milestone as its venues expanded from Da Lat to Bao Loc, bringing tea, silk, and distinctive products of the plateau into the spotlight alongside the colours of flowers. From a festival honouring flowers and flower growers, the event expanded its narrative to encompass the land, its people, traditional crafts, and the values that shape the Lam Dong brand.
In the final days of December 2017, when the floral displays around Xuan Huong Lake were vibrant with colour, over a hundred kilometers to the south, Bao Loc was also bustling with a festive atmosphere.
While Da Lat featured colourful floral displays, bustling streets crowded with tourists, and art spaces by the lake, Bao Loc showcased rolling green tea hills, mulberry cultivation and sericulture, and shimmering silks. These two localities, each with its own distinct identity, converged at the 7th Da Lat Flower Festival, which took place from December 23 to 27, 2017.
Flowers still held center stage, but the narrative of that festival season extended beyond familiar spaces.
From the City of Flowers to the Story of the Land
Under the theme "Da Lat Flowers – A Miraculous Crystallization from a Blessed Land," the 7th Da Lat Flower Festival offered a broader approach. Alongside flowers were vegetables, Arabica coffee, tea, silk, wine, and agritourism. Products that define the Da Lat – Lam Dong brand were introduced within a unified cultural, tourism, and trade promotion space.
Stalls showcasing Oolong tea, Arabica coffee, wind-dried persimmons, wine, and local specialty products were arranged along the shores of Xuan Huong Lake, offering visitors additional experiences alongside flower appreciation activities. The vegetable-flower market and agricultural product display spaces also contributed to enriching the festival's content.
Not only could visitors admire flowers, but they also had the opportunity to learn about products shaped by the natural conditions, climate, and hard work of the plateau's people. In this way, a new approach to promotion emerged, using flowers as a symbol while introducing economic and cultural values tied to the land and people of Lam Dong.
A memorable highlight of the 7th Da Lat Flower Festival was the prominent presence of Bao Loc in the festival program. After five independent editions, for the first time, the Lam Dong Tea Culture Week officially became a part of the Da Lat Flower Festival.
This connection made Bao Loc an important part of the festival season. Beyond introducing the B'Lao tea brand, the activities here also honoured mulberry cultivation, sericulture, silk reeling, weaving, and the promotion of Bao Loc – Lam Dong silk products.
Expanding the Festival's Reach – Spreading Its Values
The 7th Da Lat Flower Festival attracted nearly 500,000 visitor arrivals over its five-day run. The floral displays around Xuan Huong Lake, the tea-coffee streets, art programs, agricultural product promotion activities, and the Tea and Silk Culture Week in Bao Loc created a festival rich in content.
However, the lasting impression of the 2017 Festival lay not only in visitor numbers or the scale of activities. More memorable were the connections formed between flowers and agricultural products, between tourism landscapes and traditional crafts, and between producers and the market.
Flowers remained a beautiful, distinctive symbol of Da Lat. But starting from the 7th Festival, the story of flowers reached beyond the familiar spaces of the city of a thousand flowers, extending to tea hills, craft villages, and products bearing the imprint of Lam Dong.
Behind every petal lies not just the beauty of a festival season, but also the image of hardworking people who create the value of this highland region.