Overwhelmed? Go See Some Cherry Blossoms.

New York Times

02-05-2025

On the first warm night of spring, at the end of a particularly draining day of work and news, a friend texted to see if I wanted to come over for a drink on her deck. There was an urgency in the message — When? Now! She was gathering whomever might be around, which on a Thursday night at about 7:30 turned out to be three other people.
Occasioning all this was her cherry tree, a monumental Kanzan that canopies roughly two-thirds of her Brooklyn backyard and part of the one next door. It was in peak bloom and it might not be this magnificent in four days or even tomorrow.
Last Saturday, 22,000 people, a number greater than the seating capacity of the Barclays Center, visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, paying as much as $22 each to take in the long double rows of blossoming cherry trees that arched toward one another in a spectacular arboreal cathedral. There are 26 cherry tree varieties in the garden, including the Kanzans that line the cherry walk; most of them cultivars, rather than natives, and the first among them was planted in 1921.
The Kanzan is especially exquisite, because its pink double blossoms can contain as many as 28 petals each. The flowering period is short — usually only a week, perhaps two — and rain or any significant shift in temperature will curtail it.
There are few more powerful metaphors in the botanical world for the transient nature of beauty and the need to seize whatever chance might come along to experience it.
A few days after my neighbor's dusk viewing, I joined Adrian Benepe, the president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, for a walk through the cherry esplanade. It was a bright Tuesday afternoon and it seemed as if the entire city had posted an out-of-office emoji on Slack.
In Japan, there is a term — hanami — for the practice, centuries old, of gathering to look at cherry blossoms, a ritualization of appreciating ephemeral pleasures. A Japanese office worker does not have to lie to her boss about where she is should she choose to take off in the middle of the workday to participate in it. In the mornings, some managers might even dispatch an underling to scout a location for picnicking later on and proceed to give that person part of the day off.
Our own cherry blossom heritage owes much to Japan. In 1912, as a gesture of good will and friendship, the country's government sent more than 3,000 cherry trees to the United States. An initial shipment three years earlier had been lost at sea. The trees that arrived in New York were planted in Morningside Heights, near Riverside Church, on land that would later be named Sakura Park in their honor. In 2012, various celebrations were planned to commemorate the centennial of the gift.
In 2025, that geopolitical connection has become strained, with the policy chief of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party calling on the Trump administration to reconsider the 24 percent tariffs on Japanese goods that it has announced.
Mr. Benepe, who served as the city's parks commissioner for a decade beginning in 2002, has noticed more and more people coming to the garden — to escape, he speculated, the broader 'turmoil.' And donations remained very strong over the past year, even as other cultural institutions in the city have struggled. The garden set a record for money raised in a year without a large capital campaign.
In a largely secular urban world, parks and gardens are easily likened to churches. There is a decorum required, a sense of the devotional, a congregation eager for the awe of the divine.
Flanking the cherry corridor are the Liberty Oaks, planted in memoriam of those who died on Sept. 11. As it happened, Mr. Benepe had buried his mother on Sept. 10, 2001. The next afternoon he went to Central Park and was taken aback by the crowds in the Sheep Meadow. It seemed so discordant — all those people gathering under the late summer sun amid the shock and tragedy. But only a space as open, verdant and enormous, he came to understand, could really absorb the scale of so much grief.
This year's cherry season has coincided with Mr. Benepe's own mourning. His father, Barry Benepe, died last month at the age of 96. The elder Mr. Benepe founded New York's Greenmarkets in the mid-1970s, beginning a national movement during a period of urban collapse and a need for rebirth. From his initiative the city's network of farmers' markets grew into the largest in the country.
But New York has always delivered more than it has needed to in terms of its horticultural and green life. Elgin Botanic Garden, one of America's first public gardens, was established in the early 19th century on the site of what is now Rockefeller Center. The garden had an educational orientation. Under the stewardship of David Hosack, one of the most famous doctors of his generation, many plants were grown for medicinal purposes.
In the coming days, tens of thousands more New Yorkers will continue to seek out cherry blossoms — many of which might be in post-bloom, a phase that has its own appeal. Even in their afterlife, fallen and blanketing the ground, they are medicine of a kind.