It’s time once again for the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC, March 29-April 13, 2008.  If you plan to be anywhere near the DC area during this time, take a detour to view the extraordinary, delicate and beautiful cherry blossoms that surround our nation’s capital. 

The history of how the cherry blossom trees came to be in DC goes back almost 100 years and is a story of friendship:

The National Cherry Blossom Festival annually commemorates the 1912 gift to the city of Washington of 3,000 cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo to enhance the growing friendship between the United States and Japan and celebrate the continued close relationship between our two peoples.

In a simple ceremony on March 27, 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two of these trees on the north bank of the Tidal Basin in West Potomac Park. By 1915 the United States government had responded with a gift of flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan. In 1927, a group of American school children reenacted the initial planting; the first festival was held in 1935, sponsored by civic groups in the nation’s capital.

Three thousand, eight hundred more trees were accepted in 1965 by First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. In 1981 the cycle of giving came full circle. Japanese horticulturalists came to take cuttings from our trees to replace Yoshino cherry trees in Japan which had been destroyed in a flood. With this return gift, the trees again fulfilled their roles as a symbol and agent of friendship.  

Visual and Musical Celebration of the Cherry Blossoms.  Photo courtesy of Georgetown.

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