Liepzara participants have been decorating the city with such enthusiasm for 30 years that even Karosta's basements are starting to bloom

While in Riga floristry is some kind of expensive hobby for the wealthy, Liepāja has had Liepzara operating for 30 years — an organization that has proven you can fix everything with flowers, even the local climate.

It all started when Vija Kārkliņa traveled from Pāvilosta to Riga using five different modes of transport to learn floristry. Five! Even our public transport isn't that complicated. But the result was that in 1996, a studio appeared in Liepāja with a name chosen democratically — they wrote options on a blackboard and voted. Liepzars won because they worked a lot with branches. In Riga they probably would have chosen something with 'premium' or 'exclusive'.

The studio gained particular fame with the Flower Festival, which took over Liepāja for 13 years with such force that even flowers started growing in Karosta's mythical basements. Well okay, maybe not exactly in the basements, but definitely in the Officers' Assembly House, Lāčplēša Garden, and Jūrmala Park. Thousands of visitors came to watch Liepāja women create miracles from flowers and branches.

'One of the participants admitted that creating compositions from wire stems is particularly difficult,' a source tells us. Of course it's difficult — Liepāja's wind already tears everything apart, and then you add wire stems on top! But our ladies aren't giving up. The 30th anniversary cake was so beautiful that even winter depression momentarily forgot we're in March.

Now several founders are actively working in the studio, proving that when a Liepāja woman starts something, she continues it to the end. Even if it means 30 years of fighting with wire stems and salty wind.