Springtime means the return of blossom. Rhiannon Batten chooses Britain’s top spots to gaze at its glory

Tar barrel racing and maypole dancing are all very well but why haven’t we Brits, with our cold, damp winters, acquired a predilection for taking saunas, like our Scandinavian neighbours? Or developed more of a habit of eating farmhouse cheeses with dinner, like our French friends, rather than rolling them down hills? Perhaps the most obvious cultural custom we’re missing out on, however, is that of hanami, the Japanese celebration of cherry blossom.

The glorification of the cherry blossom (sakura) appears in the country’s literature, music and even military culture and, for two weeks or so every spring, all eyes in Japan turn to “viewing the flowers”. An appreciation of both a show-stopping natural phenomenon and of the ephemeral nature of life, so intense is the attention devoted to this symbolic blossom that the Japanese Meteorological Agency even tracks the “cherry blossom front” as its pink and white froth fizzes up the archipelago in line with warmer weather.

For the majority of the country’s citizens, there’s only one way to celebrate it: with a festive picnic under the trees. The custom is now so deeply rooted that there are special foods associated with hanami (some laced with sakura petals or leaves), and a word, yozakura, to describe the specific experience of viewing the trees at night, their blush-coloured petals lit by lanterns.

Could the custom catch on here? We may not have Japan’s profusion of ornamental cherry trees in the British Isles but we share the same propensity for picnics, and for the spirit-boosting thrill of spotting those first spring blossoms after the grey days of January and February.

Crucially, there are also plenty of spring blossoms worth viewing on these shores, a horticultural domino effect that races through the country from south to north, starting with the blackthorn in late February and bursting forth, via pears, plums and damsons in March and cherries in April, to the climactic blooms of apple and hawthorn in May.

With pollinators and other wildlife relying on these early flowers, and on the fruits that follow them, there’s surely an argument for instigating an annual UK hanami celebration in aid of habitat preservation alone. To get the ball rolling, here are five great places to go blossom-watching this year.

Northumberland
This might not be the first place that comes to mind when you hear the word hanami, but the Cherry Orchard at the Alnwick Garden is home to the largest collection of taihaku trees in the world; 329 of them bloom for two weeks in late spring. These prized cherry trees, with their distinctively large white blossoms, had become extinct in Japan. In 1926, however, one Collingwood “Cherry” Ingram visited the country’s Cherry Society, saw an 18th-century painting of one and recognised the blossom from a tree that had been imported to Sussex in 1899. Cuttings were taken, the taihaku was reintroduced to Japan and the species now lives on worldwide.
alnwickgarden.com

Cornwall
In Cornwall the floral focus each spring is on magnolias; six nominated champion magnolia campbellii are monitored in six different Great Gardens across the county to record the date they come into full bloom. Once all six have at least 50 flowers (the Nare Hotel posts updates via its online Bloomometer), spring is officially said to have arrived in England, sometimes a full month ahead of meteorological spring. All the gardens are worth visiting in early spring, with camellias, rhododendrons and acacias in bloom, as well as a range of magnolias. At Caerhays, however, the magnolia collection is so rich that its gardens are home to 16 champion magnolia trees, each a different variety.
greatgardensofcornwall.co.uk

Herefordshire
As with the damson orchards of Cumbria’s Lyth Valley, or Kent’s apple orchards, the fruit-growing heritage of Herefordshire makes the county ripe for blossom-spotting. Last year saw Visit Herefordshire launch a dedicated guide to blossom chasing called In the Pink, to help visitors better discover the frothy blooms of the county’s many apple, pear, cherry and other fruit trees. Set to be repeated this year, beginning in late March, the guide will include weekly blossom updates, orchard tours and details of walks, bike rides and other trails speckled with “nature’s confetti”.
visitherefordshire.co.uk/inthepink

Cheshire
Tatton Park in Cheshire is home to one of the most painstakingly designed Japanese gardens in the UK (Cowden, east of Stirling, is another exceptional one, but there are many others worth seeking out). The garden was founded in 1910 by the estate’s then-owner Alan de Tatton, following his visit to the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition in London of that year. With its Shinto shrine, tea house and bridge over a “Golden Brook”, the garden offers plenty to see, and is particularly atmospheric during cherry blossom season, when artfully positioned plants, rocks and stones are framed by the billowing trees. The garden is accessible via guided tours at most times of year (though not in winter) and can also be seen from the estate’s new Spring Cherry Walk, a pathway lined with 40 young trees.
tattonpark.org.uk

Dorset
Last April the National Trust instigated its first Blossom Day celebration. Though prompted by the charity, the event wasn’t limited to its own properties but invited people across the UK to gather near any local blossom and share images on social media using the hashtag #BlossomWatch. The event is set to become an annual tradition, marked every fourth Saturday in April, and some of the best places to join in this year will be at the Trust’s own properties. Not least Kingston Lacy in Dorset, where, in its restored Japanese Tea Garden, visitors can see pink and white blooms from a variety of established cherry trees. Last year saw the planting of 100 more, part of a project celebrating friendship between Britain and Japan.
nationaltrust.org.uk/kingston-lacy

This feature appears in the current issue of the Idler (March-April 2022) – out now.

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