Not Quite a Million Roses, But a Spectacular Flower Park in Taagepera

Text Timo Raussi
Photos Wagenküll Hotell OÜ

What happened to Alice after she returned from Wonderland? Was she able to adapt to ordinary life after her fantasy-filled adventures? These were the questions the owners of the Wagenküll spa manor in the Art Nouveau castle of Taagepera in southern Estonia asked themselves while thinking of ideas to follow up last summer’s and winter’s theme parks.

Having convinced themselves that Alice would still have loved fairy-tale-like, colourful, and highly photogenic landscapes later in adulthood, the entrepreneurs decided to focus this summer specifically on flowers. As a result, last weekend Taagepera, close to the Mulgimaa Experience Centre, which presents the history of the region’s wealthy Estonian farmers in realistic surroundings, opened “Alice and the Land of a Million Flowers.”

At Wagenküll’s request, the Metsakuru nursery near Viljandi spent the whole winter and spring growing two large greenhouses full of dahlias, begonias, sunflowers, pansies, marigolds, petunias and many other summer flowers in nearly every colour of the rainbow. These have now been planted along the winding paths and garden walkways of the castle park to create an imaginative magical world, and the floral displays will be maintained throughout the summer to keep the spectacle in bloom.

The park is open to the public daily from 10:00 to 20:00 until 27 September. A summer café will also open in the park in early July. Creating the plantings has understandably not been a free undertaking, so admission to the park is ticketed. Tickets cost €20 for adults, €10 for children aged 7–17, and €55 for families (two adults and two or more children). Separate group tickets are available for groups of more than 12 people. Guests staying at the Wagenküll manor hotel, as well as day visitors to its spa, can enter the park free of charge. Tickets can be purchased on site or in advance online here.

Photos and videos of the magical park and its construction can be admired, among other places, on the Facebook pages of Wagenküll Spa and Metsakuru nursery.

And if you want to see who is walking through the park of a million flowers right now, Wagenküll’s website also offers a live webcam. Watching it is free of charge.

Taagepera is located 200 kilometres from Tallinn, very close to the Latvian border. For those travelling by public transport, the spa hotel recommends first checking connections to either Viljandi or Valga, and then looking up local bus services from there using, for example, the Moovit app or the Peatus.ee website.

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Alice in Wonderland Estonia sights spa manor Taagepera Castle theme park Travel Wagenküll