Spring flowers seemed to come and go in a week this year with yo-yo weather making the flowers bloom early, and over quickly. We were lucky that the week of Spring break was the peak of the cherry trees blooming and so we made a trip to Branch Brook Park to enjoy the blossoms. This was our first trip to Branch Brook Park in Newark, NJ, which we specifically went to as it boasts the largest number of cherry blossom trees in the nation. We have come to look forward to cherry blossoms blooming, being that we love pink and we love flowers, cherry blossom time is divine (allergies and all!). The past few years we have enjoyed the cherry blossoms all over Brooklyn, and especially the Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. This year I was looking forward to seeing our new neighbourhood in bloom – it came a close second to the gorgeous streets of Ditmas Park in Spring.
Branch Brook Park has a Cherry Blossom Welcome Center with a beautiful cherry blossom mural and life size imitation cherry blossom tree inside it. The week we attended was during the Cherry Blossom Festival, but the welcome center did not offer us much, and I am not sure if this was due to us being there on a weekday or not, but while it was pretty I wish it had been more like a museum. I also wish it offered a detailed map of the cherry blossom trees throughout the park.
We did not travel very far into the park as it is huge and the tress appeared very spaced out. The Girls were on their scooters so we were able to cover some ground. I felt like the cherry blossom trees would have had more impact if they had been planted close together like at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. From what I gather there are numerous variety of cherry blossoms trees at Branch Brook and when we went the single blossoms had already flowered.
Rather than looking for more trees we planted ourselves beneath one lovely old tree that had tapered limbs bowing to the ground. It was covered in popping buds and so we were in a canopy of pink petal pom poms. We had a picnic packed, and so quite happily spent a couple of hours beneath the tree building dandelion and cherry blossom fairy houses. I think in fact it looked like we were the fairies, playing in a cherry blossom fairy house.
The petals were already starting to drop and so we were treated to pink snow when the breeze blew. I let the girls pick the flowers as they were to come to pass so quickly anyway. I am glad we were able to savor the moment and spend a day playing in the pink. Until next year…when we will surely do it again!
