The pink and white cherry blossoms are a welcome contrast to the grey dampness that seems to hang over the city for months on end.
Their recent arrival is celebrated as one of the first signs of spring — dozens of people walked back and forth underneath the canopy of akebono cherry trees at the Burrard SkyTrain Station Saturday afternoon and stood with arms outstretched and hands cupped like they would during a snowfall, to catch the blossoms as they swirled to the ground when wind rustled through branches.
In front of the station, Wendy Cutler organized more than 60 people who showed up for the first ornamental cherry blossom walk of the Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Cherry Blossom Festival. Cutler, in pink and black with trainers in a cherry blossom print, is the festival’s cherry scout coordinator, meaning she has documented the trees and their fleeting blooming patterns for the last 10 years after answering an advertisement for cherry scouts in the wanted section of the Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Sun.
“No knowledge or experience necessary,” Cutler recalled as she led half the group up Thurlow Street — the other half went with Cutler’s friend and fellow cherry scout Laura Blumenthal, who led a quicker version of the walk. “I never even really looked at the cherry trees before.”
Cutler is enough of an expert now to know when to schedule the walks. While the festival is planned months in advance with many of its events starting next week, the first walk of the season was only decided two weeks ago because it’s difficult to predict the blossom bloom. One of the factors is temperature — once thermometers hit 10 C, and there’s some sun, the trees start blooming.
There are 55 different kinds of cherry trees in Metro Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»and Cutler’s walk, which meandered through downtown and the West End, stopped at a handful of them. Those on the walk marveled at the akebonos, pendulas, shirotaes, ranchos, uminekos, sendai-shidares and a magnolia for good measure. Cutler’s version was entertaining with her straight-shooting style, which didn’t mince words when it came to unfortunate cherry trees on private property that suffered unkind cuts from gardener’s shears.
“By and large, people particularly in the walking group are interested to the extent that cherries come in pink and white and that’s about it,” she said, though the opportunity to learn beyond the two-hour-long walk is available through a book one of the organizers brought along called Ornamental Cherries in Vancouver. Written by associate director of UBC’s botanical garden Douglas Justice with the Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Cherry Blossom Festival, it details the different varieties and characteristics along with, helpfully, where to find such trees in the city.
Winter reminded the group that it isn’t done yet as the rains lashed down an hour into the walk and pelted the sidewalks so hard that pant legs were soaked from the splash-back alone. Still, most of the group hung on to take full opportunity of the guided walk.
The free walks are just one part of the festival that began 10 years ago by Linda Poole, who lived abroad for 13 years with her husband who was in the Canadian Foreign Service. She had learned about the Sakura festivals in Japan and since many of Vancouver’s 40,000 trees were gifts from that country during the 1930s to 1950s, decided to create a Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»festival to both express the city’s gratitude and to celebrate the beauty of the trees.
The Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Cherry Blossom Festival starts March 24 with a variety of events listed on the festival’s site (). To celebrate its 10th year, a “blossom barge” will be part of this year’s festival where 40 trees in bloom will be on a barge pulled by a tug around Canada Place and False Creek. The Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Metropolitan Orchestra, yoyo prodigy Harrison Lee and others will perform near the barge at Granville Island during the last weekend of the festival April 16 and 17.
@rebeccablissett
