Virginia Beach’s cherry blossom season is here and Red Wing Park will open, with the flower buds, for the occasion.
The park, home to more than 150 Yoshino cherry trees, closed in October for road improvements, including widening the entry and repaving parking lots. A playground is also being built. Work is expected to be completed in June.
However, construction won’t get in the way of visitors seeing the blush-colored blooms that emerge every year from late March to early April. The park will be open Saturday through April 5.
The park also hosts a fair for the flowers, showcasing Japanese art and culture at its annual Cherry Blossom Festival., allowing
The festival kicks off Saturday and continues through the following weekend with performances, garden tours and martial arts classes. On Sunday, a vendor market will sell artwork and other merchandise.
Virginia Beach established a sister city relationship with Miyazaki, Japan in 1992. Red Wing Park has several monuments to the relationship, including the Japanese garden and an azumaya, a Japanese gazebo with pillars representing the cardinal directions. Not the least of those monuments are the cherry trees: Miyazaki gave Virginia Beach 100 in 2005 and another 55 in 2010.
The cherry trees brought the millennia-old tradition of hanami, “flower viewing,” the custom of enjoying the ephemeral beauty of spring blooms.
The cherry-blossom front is a closely watched seasonal event in Japan. The Japan Meteorological Agency tracks over 50 benchmark trees nationwide.
On Monday, an agency official declared the start of Japan’s cherry blossom season: More than five blooms had appeared on a specimen tree at Tokyo’s Yasukini shrine, the minimum number required for the announcement.
Washington, D.C.’s famous cherry trees are not far behind. The National Park Service announced Monday the city’s 3,800 trees had reached stage four out of six on their way to peak bloom. The Park Service predicted peak bloom — the flowers’ fluffiest stage — would be March 28 through 31.
