Odense Flower Festival, 2014

In my review of Odense Flower Festival last year I wrote: “It is no secret that I've been very disappointed in the Odense Flower Festival the past 4 years and that I had thought of boycotting it this year. In the end I didn't, but now I wish I had! In fact, this year the festival reached a new low, which I thought would be impossible!”

This is a very fitting description of this year’s Flower Festival, except now it’s 5 years instead of 4. It is such a shame as the festival started out as a true flower fairy land 10 years ago with imaginative floral sculptures everywhere, but like other of Odense’s famous festival (especially the annual Harry Potter Festival), the magic has been replaced by greed. Let’s face it: Odense Flower Festival is no longer about giving the visitors a look into the amazing world of flower art and sculptures, but about nursing schools selling as many flowers as possible.

It was a small Flower Festival this year, as the exhibited flowers were mostly concentrated around Lotze’s Garden, Brandt’s Art Gallery, Greyfriars Square and the town square called Flakhaven. This year the theme was “The most beautiful garden in Denmark”, so in the town square nursing schools had just put up big banners with photos of Danish castles and manors and placed flowers beneath them.

In Lotze’s Garden they had simply reused the sculptures from the past many years and at Brandt’s Art Gallery many of the exhibited items had nothing to do with the flower festival, but were leftovers from an art exhibition. Among them were some amazing-looking trees.

There were a few free concerts at the town square during the festival, one of them by the Danish band Tankens Bager (Baker of Thoughts) where my friend Claus is the singer, songwriter and guitarist. I went to see him and had a nice evening with his sister and the rest of his family and that was the festival highlight for me this year.

 Last year I ended my review by writing: “I have to remember to boycott the exhibition next year. I know I keep hoping that Odense Flower Festival is going to be restored to its former glory, but after five miserable years, I guess I have to realise that I hope against hope.” Now I’ve hoped for six years and this time I give up. I’m not going to visit Odense Flower Festival next year, so feel free to regard this review as an epitaph!

© Lise Lyng Falkenberg, 2014