You don’t get this beautiful in a day, and Ashikaga Flower Park has two other types of flowers also looking their best.
Few countries have seasonal swings quite so dramatic as Japan’s, where midwinter can be mercilessly cold and midsummer brutally hot. Getting from one extreme to the other, means, of course, that Japan’s experiences everything in between in the interceding months, and that means that there’s almost always a new set of flowers set to burst into bloom…and sometimes three different sets all at once.
That’s the situation right now at Ashikaga Flower Park in the town of Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture. The most dramatic of the in-bloom floral trio are the wisteria, or fuji, as they’re called in Japanese. The park has more than 350 wisteria trees, but if you’re wondering how many of them are needed to create the breathtaking canopy seen in the photos above and below, it’s only one.
This amazing tree is Ashikaga Flower Park’s Great Wisteria, whose branches spread out over an area of over 1,000 square meters (10,764 square feet). And if you’re thinking it must take a long time for a single tree to get that big, you’re exactly right, as the Great Wisteria is more than 160 years old.
Because of how beautiful Ashikaga Flower Park’s wisteria are, the facility stays open after dark at this time of year, with the contrast between the illuminated blossoms ad the black sky giving them a dramatic atmosphere different from the softer colors of the day.
▼ If those flowers beyond the Great Wisteria have caught your eye, we’ll get to them in a minute.
As mentioned above, though, there are hundreds of other wisteria trees at the park, including an 80-meter tunnel of white wisteria flanking a footpath.
And while it may not quite match the size or age of the Great Wisteria, the Yae Kokuryu Fuji is no slouch in the looks department either.
Ah, but we said there are three types of flowers reaching full bloom, right? Next on the list are the azaleas, which we caught a glimpse of behind the Great Wisteria in that earlier photo…
As with the wisteria, the park’s azaleas have a variety of colors, and are positioned in a way that lets you line up both types of blossoms in the same shot.
And rounding out the trio are the laburnum flowers, also known as golden chain or golden rain.
Tochigi doesn’t get as many international visitors as the prefectures along the typical tourism Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka “golden route,” but Ashikaga Flower Park is a pretty easily doable day trip from Tokyo. Starting from several of the capital’s major train stations (Tokyo, Ueno, Shinjuku, and Ikebukuro) you can make it to Ashikaga Flower Park Station on JR East’s Ryomo Line in just a little over two hours. From there it’s only a three-minute walk to the park entrance, and with the park open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. between now and May 6, and 8 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. May 7-18, there’s plenty of time to make it there and back regardless of whether you’re a morning person or a night owl.
Location information
Ashikaga Flower Park / あしかがフラワーパーク
Address: Tochigi-ken, Ashikaga-shi, Hasama-cho 607
栃木県足利市迫間町６０７
Admission prices and operating hours vary by date
Website
Source: PR Times, Ashikaga Flower Park
Images: PR Times
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