Festival de Flores y Jardines in Mexico City

Once a year, Mexico City’s Polanco neighborhood becomes a vibrant garden. Since 2017, Festival de Flores y Jardines (FYJA) has brought florists, landscape architects and artists together to adorn public spaces with monumental flower arches and temporary gardens. The theme of the 2026 edition is “the Mexican garden”: its biodiversity, its history, and its importance to the city. Latin American photographers Greta Rico and Luvia Lazo follow the festival with their Leica SL3, capturing how it unfolds, from harvest to market to installation.

Before the first flower arch comes the harvest. The latest edition of the FYJA focuses on the Mexican garden, and, with it, the country’s native flowers: dahlias and cempasúchil, nochebuena (poinsettia), and wild orchids. On the fields around Mexico City, thousands upon thousands of flowers are picked by hand, bunched and carefully layered in boxes, still damp with morning dew. It’s a craft that is sensitive to timing, as some species only flower for a few hours, while others only survive transport in cool weather.

The flowers go directly from the fields to the market – often to the Mercado de Jamaica in the heart of the city – where farmers offer their harvest at their stalls. In the early hours of the morning, the aisles are filled with colours and scents – roses alongside calla lilies, gerbera by the buttercups. Buyers inspect the stems and buds with a seasoned eye, exchange a few words of negotiation, and carry buckets of flowers away with them. With the Leica SL3 in hand, the two photographers capture the hustle and bustle before the flowers are turned into arches or sculptures. But this market is much more than just business for the FYJA. It is the source of every floral façade and installation that will later be on display in Polanco.