Ashikaga Flower Park

Under a single trellis the size of a small square, a curtain of lilac-purple flowers hangs so thickly that the branches holding it up disappear. The great wisteria of Ashikaga Flower Park is a pair of Japanese wisteria vines whose trained branches have been joined into one canopy covering about 2,000 square metres, said to be the largest wisteria trellis in Japan, and in a good spring each vine carries around 160,000 flower clusters. Together with a long-tressed wisteria whose racemes can reach 1.8 metres, a double-flowered dark purple variety and a tunnel of white wisteria, the old vines are protected as natural monuments of Tochigi Prefecture.

The park traces its beginnings to the 1920s, when a landowner in Ashikaga planted a wisteria in a corner of his garden. In 1968 the family opened the garden so that local people could enjoy the vine in bloom, as Hayakawa Farm, the forerunner of today's park. As the town grew up around the site, the decision was taken to move the plants, and in February 1996 four great wisteria, each then well over a century old, were transplanted to the present grounds, a former wetland of about 8 hectares crossed by ponds and creeks. The operation was carried out by Tsukamoto Konami, the first woman in Japan to qualify as a certified tree doctor, and the park describes it as the first successful transplant of such large wisteria in the country. The vines bloom from mid-April to mid-May, when the park holds its wisteria festival and lights the flowers after dark; the illuminated wisteria and the winter light display have both been named among Japan's Night View Heritage sites. In 2014 the American network CNN included the park, as Japan's only entry, in a list of dream destinations for the year, comparing the great vine to the glowing tree in the film Avatar, and the number of overseas visitors rose sharply after that.

Beyond the wisteria season the gardens are planted for colour through the year, and in the dark months, from late October to early February, they turn into one of the largest light shows in Japan, with around five million bulbs in 2019, all designed and installed by the park's own staff. Ashikaga itself is an old town in south-western Tochigi, the cradle of the Ashikaga clan that later produced a line of shoguns, and known since the Heian period for its academy, the Ashikaga Gakkō.

Getting there

The park lies on the eastern side of Ashikaga, next to Ashikaga Flower Park Station on the JR Ryomo Line, which opened in 2018; Tomita Station is about a 13-minute walk away. The city of Sano is about 5.5 km away. Tokyo Haneda Airport (HND) is about 88 km away.