Cherry trees in North Park signal spring and Japan-U.S. friendship
There is nothing quite like sitting beneath a cherry tree and peering through a delicate pink cloud of blossoms into a clear blue sky, says Carol Tenny, who joined her family for many springtime flower-watching parties while growing up in Japan.
Known there as Sakura, the flowering cherry trees draw millions of people to parks in late March and early April for Hanami picnics and parties with music, boxed lunches and drinking.
But you don’t have to go to Japan to join the fun. From 2-4 p.m. April 14, the Pittsburgh Sakura Project will hold a free Hanami flowerviewing eventat North Park.
At 2:30 and 3:30 p.m., tours will leave from the Harmony Shelter on Tennis Court Road near the boathouse
and visit different groves containing 280 trees planted by volunteersin the Allegheny County Park.
There will be tree-growing and photography tips, refreshments, a mulching demonstration — even a Sakura Quiz. RSVP to SakuraPGHboard@gmail.com to help them plan.
The event will be held rain or shine and canceled only if there is a thunderstorm.
“The cherries have a different kind of beauty in the rain,” Tenny said. “They are still beautiful.”
The Fox Chapel resident, who is now a board member, got involved in the Sakura Project as a planting volunteer early on. That’s when she met its founder and president, Fumio Yasuzawa, 72, of Mars.
Born and raised in the suburbs of Tokyo, Yasuzawa moved to New York City in 1975 to work as a chef at a Japanese restaurant. In 2001, he opened Chaya Japanese Cuisine in Squirrel Hill.
Several years later, during a conversation with a friend, he wondered if cherry trees could survive Pittsburgh’s harsh winters. He planted six trees near his home, an old farmhouse in Cranberry, and was delighted to find that all six bloomed each spring.
Then he said to his friend: “Let’s plant cherry trees in Pittsburgh.”
They created the nonprofit Pittsburgh Sakura Project (www.pghsakuraproject.org) and received permission from county officials to plant several varieties of Japanese cherry trees in North Park in the spring of 2009.
Landscape architect Kary Arimoto of the firm arimoto + mercer designed the groves and each year more trees are planted.
“I think it is important to always talk to cherry trees with love and take care of them,” Yasuzawa said.
About 75% of the trees survive, he said, and certain cultivars are hardier than others.
Accolade, Akebono, Weeping Cherry and the double flower Kwanzan do best in North Park. But Yoshino, the cherry trees that bloom so beautifully in Washington D.C., do not survive here, he said.
Yasuzawa, who tended to the trees on Monday, said they are sometimes affected by root rot or a fungus known as black knot. Some are damaged by deer, park users or mowers. Treatments, stakes and deer barriers help, but sometimes trees don’t make it.
“Even in almost the same area and the same type of cherry tree, some trees will do well and others will die,” he wrote in an email. “It’s really difficult.”
But Yasuzawa, who has retired and downsized, remains undeterred.
“We will continue to plant trees for the friendship between our countries, America and Japan, and for the people of the world.
“I also want to pass on the Pittsburgh Sakura Project to the younger generation.”