National Cherry Blossom Festival

The festival

What is National Cherry Blossom Festival

In spring, the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin, the reflecting pool near the Jefferson Memorial, and the gardens of the Washington Monument are covered in white and pink blossoms, and the U.S. capital holds its most popular festival. The National Cherry Blossom Festival lasts about four weeks, with events on the National Mall, in several neighborhoods across the city and in nearby areas of Virginia and Maryland.

The trees were a gift from Japan. A first shipment of about 2,000 saplings arrived in 1910 infested with insects and disease and had to be burned. In 1912, with the support of Tokyo’s mayor Yukio Ozaki, 3,020 cherry trees of twelve varieties arrived, most of them Yoshino. On March 27 of that year, First Lady Helen Taft and the wife of the Japanese ambassador planted the first two trees on the north bank of the Tidal Basin. In 1915, the United States reciprocated by sending flowering dogwoods to Japan, and in the following decades new saplings, including genetic copies of the 1912 trees, renewed the groves.

The first festival was organized in 1935 by civic associations in the city. The lighting of a three-century-old granite lantern, offered by the government of Tokyo in 1954, is one of the festival rituals. It stands by the Tidal Basin, near a small pagoda donated by the city of Yokohama in 1958. The festival celebrates the friendship between the two countries and the arrival of spring, and much of the program features Japanese culture.

Blooming has no fixed date. National Park Service horticulturists monitor the buds of Yoshino cherry trees at various stages and announce a prediction for peak bloom, the day when about 70% of the blossoms are open. In most years this occurs between the last week of March and the first week of April, but it has happened in mid-March and in mid-April, and the blossoms last only a few days at their peak: cold, calm weather prolongs the bloom, while rain and wind end it. That is why the festival is long, and visitors who arrive before or after the peak still find programming and other varieties in flower.

Traditional events include the kite festival in the Washington Monument grounds, an evening of music with fireworks by the river, the Constitution Avenue parade with inflatable balloons, decorated floats and marching bands, and the Sakura Matsuri, the nation’s largest Japanese street festival, with performances, crafts and food. For visitors to Washington in spring, the combination of memorials, museums and cherry trees in bloom is the city’s most iconic scene.