The Moscow Summer. Flower Jam festival will be organised between 20 July and 6 August. Sweets

and flowers will be the central theme of the event. More than 40 festival venues will be decorated with

unusual plant and flower arrangements based on designs by the winners of the Open International

Landscape Design Competition. Flower beds will cover Novy Arbat, and a flower market will open on

Tverskaya Square.

Sweet dates celebrations

Festival organisers have decided to devote nearly every day of the festival to a separate topic. The

festival will open with International Cake Day that is marked on 20 July all over the world. On this day,

an exhibition of the most unusual cakes and a cooking competition will take place, with professional

confectioners offering their ideas on how to decorate baked cakes with piped icing flowers and

marzipan fruit.

The programme will also feature Gingerbread Day (21 July), Ice-Cream Day (22 July), Honey Day (30

July), Lollies and Candy Day (31 July), and also Jam Day (5 August). These are the sweet things that

will be the focus of the animation part and gastronomical programme. Putting  sweets aside, there will

also be flower days devoted to roses (24 July) and gardening (29 July).

Visit to flower market

As part of the flower days, organisers intend to use various techniques of decorative

gardening: flower paintings, art objects made out of flowers, and moss eco-graffiti that will

transform the streets of Moscow into gardens and flowerbeds.

For example, flowerbeds with unusual design will adorn Tverskoy Boulevard and Nikolskaya

Street, while other flower beds will be spread across Novy Arbat.

A market in Tverskaya Square will offer flowers and plants grown in Russia and overseas.

Such markets work in many European cities between spring and autumn and are hugely

popular with local residents and tourists alike.

Draft engineering solution

Jam based on classical literature recipes

The cultural programme of the festival will involve flower arranging and gardening, and also

culinary workshops in desert making. For example, the Green Market will open in Revolution

Square – the area where children will be able to plant and grow their own harvest!

Confectionery workshops will teach festival-goers to make cream, fruit, nut, chocolate and

cheese ice-cream, and also sorbets and jelly, cocktails and smoothies. Chefs will also help

visitors make jam based on recipes from classical literature. Gooseberry jam from Alexander

Pushkin’s books, jam from field strawberries from Ivan Turgenev’s novels, wild strawberries

from Leo Tolstoy’s family Cookbook, and also apple jam based the recipe of poet Alexander

Blok’s grandmother.

Flower waltz

Apart from workshops, the festival will feature sports entertainment, including a cycling

parade for everyone on 23 July, with the only requirement being flower decorations on their

bikes.

Tverskaya Square will host Flower Waltz ball on 5 August. Ball dancing couples – ladies in

long dresses and hats adorned with flowers and gentlemen wearing flowers in their

buttonholes – will set the tone for this particular event. Photo sessions will be available with

dresses made out of flowers (in total, three unusual art object outfits). An orchestra will

perform music for those who feel like joining in the dancing and taking to the dance floor.

The festival venues will be spread across the city centre, the more remote residential areas

and also in parks. Two competitions will be organised as part of the event: visitors will choose

the best recipe and design for Moskva candy, and gardeners will be allowed to decorate a

garden bed during the landscape design competition.