In 1927, after a visit to Washington D.C.’s famous cherry blossoms, Caroline Bamberger Fuld donated the first cherry blossoms to Newark’s Branch Brook Park. Visiting the park in early spring quickly became an annual tradition. But it wasn’t until 50 years ago that the Essex County Parks Department organized the month into an official festival.
“There had been some attempts to create a festival but nothing concrete emerged until 1976,” said Maressa McFarlane, a coordinator for the Essex County Parks Department.
The festival was created at time when the city was still brushing itself off from the 1967 riots, according to Liz Del Tufo, who helped created the festival along with Kathleen Galop. “It was a period when we were all doing things to attract people to Newark and make people think of the city in a different way,” Del Tufo said. “We all felt that one of the most positive things was the cherry blossoms.”
Today, Branch Brook Park, which spans Belleville and Newark, claims the most cherry blossoms in the United States. After a planting earlier this year of 50 new trees, Branch Brook Park’s current count of trees is 5,300, many of which were propagated from Fuld’s original donation.
Peak bloom is expected on April 8 and should last for about two weeks. It is different every year because cherry blossoms are notoriously unpredictable. A warm streak in March can awaken the buds early while a late-month frost can cause the pedals to flop to the ground. In the festival’s first year, the petals had all fallen to the ground by the time the festival began. This time around, the blooms seem to be playing nice.
Absent a crystal ball, the county parks department has ways of dealing with the tree’s fickle personality. Cherry blossoms come in different varieties — Ukon, Gyoiko, and Yoshino — each with different color petals and blooming times. Planting these varieties ensures that over the course of the month, there is a steady pageant of blooms. Fuld’s initial donation of 2,000 trees contained 28 different varieties. But Yoshinos are by far the most common in Branch Brook Park.
Newark’s festival has always been culturally linked to the one in D.C., which began as a diplomatic gift from Japan in 1912, and both cities vied over the years for bragging rights of having the most trees. In the first year of the festival, the organizing committee came up with a friendly game with D.C.’s Chamber of Commerce, who turned down the idea as “silly.” At the time, D.C. still had more cherry blossoms.
“We feel Newark’s 2,000 Japanese cherry blossom trees have for too long been left in the shadow of Washington’s display,” Kathleen Galop, co-director of the Newark Cherry Blossom Festival committee, told the Star-Ledger.
It was under County Executive Joe DiVincenzo that Branch Brook Park finally took the title, but it required breaking a longstanding code of not planting flowering plants in the southern part of the park, which was famously designed by the Olmsted Brothers in 1898, Del Tufo said.
“He broke the code and planted them all through the original Olmsted portion of the park,” Del Tufo said.
This year, visitors to the Cherry Blossom Welcome Center will find a brand new building designed by Di Caro & Rubino Architect. It is three times the size of the original to accommodate the ever-growing festival which typically draws about 10,000-11,000 visitors. The welcome center also conveniently has the highest concentration of trees and offers history tours.
“There are several really lovely groves right near the building and parking lot that allow park patrons to get up close to the tree,” McFarlane said. “The trees are on the shorter side and although it might be tempting to take some souvenirs, this is very dangerous to the overall health of the trees.”
