Wisteria!

Last weekend, I took advantage of the final days of Golden Week by taking the train to visit Ashikaga Flower Park.  The park is considered to be one of the best place to see wisteria in all of Japan.  Tochigi Prefecture designated the park a National Treasure.  It was gorgeous!

Among it's several large wisteria trees, it has a 145 year old wisteria trellis the size of 600 tatami mats, which is about 1000 square meters.  There are more than 350 wisteria trees in the park.  When we were there, the light pink wisteria was on it's way out, and the yellow wisteria was just coming in, but the purple, large, double-petaled, and white wisteria were in full bloom.  There were screens of wisteria, tunnels of wisteria, a bridge covered in wisteria...   

There are also about 1,500 100-year old azalea bushes. 

And then there were the clematis.

And "Monet's Pond".

The park is designed to have 8 flower seasons, including water lilies in the summer and everything all lit up in December and January, so I really need to go back!





A couple days ago, I heard that the head gardener is a woman, which I guess is pretty unusual here, and a Japanese news program recently did a piece on her.  From what I saw, she does an amazing job!