The little-known cherry blossom festival in Germany

Japan may be the first place that comes to mind when it comes to cherry blossoms and the sprinkling of magenta buds, but there’s another place in Europe that has impressive blooms to look out for, too.

The unassuming city of Bonn in Germany is home to an otherwise ordinary avenue that comes alive with colour each year for a mere 20 or so days.

The cobblestone street of Heerstraße is lined with Japanese cherry blossoms that were planted in the 1980s.

There is a tiny window of opportunity to see these buds in full bloom, which makes it all the more special when you get there, and the trees are generally in bloom for just two to three weeks at spring, usually during April.

Each year a cherry blossom festival is hosted to give flower enthusiasts, locals and tourists alike, the opportunity to be enchanted by these budding beauties. 

It wasn’t always the plan to have cherry blossoms line this particular avenue of Bonn, which was part of an initiative to inject new life into the old part of town by planting trees. Initially there was a lot of resistance from the locals who didn’t want large trees out the front of their homes, blocking out the sun.

Cherry blossoms weren’t even the first tree variety option – the hawthorn tree, which also blooms but doesn’t grow so big, was the first option but a local nursery had snapped them up first, so it fell back to the cherry blossom.

What a happy little accident that was!

A post shared by #viaggivirtuali (@viaggivirtuali) on Oct 11, 2017 at 6:55am PDT