Ashikaga Flower Park

Ashikaga Flower Park is a flower park of about 100,000 square meters in Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture. It is best known for its wisteria, and its winter illumination is counted among Japan's Three Great Illuminations.

History

The park began in 1968 as Hayakawa Farm (Hayakawa Noen, 早川農園) in Horikomi-cho, now Asakura-cho, in Ashikaga. Its great wisteria was already known as the 250-tatami wisteria. Urban development forced a move, and in 1997 the garden reopened in Hasama-cho as Ashikaga Flower Park. The new site was former wetland, and more than 250 tonnes of charcoal were laid to improve the soil.

The wisteria

The great wisteria is made up of four trees: three Noda kushaku-fuji and one double-flowered yae kokuryu-fuji. They were about 130 years old when Tsukamoto Konami, Japan's first woman tree doctor, moved them to the new site, the first transplant of its kind in Japan to succeed. The great wisteria and an 80-meter tunnel of white wisteria are designated a Natural Monument of Tochigi Prefecture. The wisteria is at its best from mid April to mid May, when the park holds its wisteria festival for about a month.

The illumination

The park divides its year into eight flower seasons. The last, Hikari no Hana no Niwa (光の花の庭), the Garden of Light Flowers, opens in late October and lights the whole park, with the great wisteria picked out in lights as its symbol. The Night View Convention Bureau has named it one of Japan's Three Great Illuminations, and it took first place nationwide in an illumination ranking chosen by night view tourism guides.