Visiting the Japanese Sakura cherry blossom trees in Toronto’s High Park

Last week, on a late, sunny afternoon, we headed down to High Park to pay the blossoming cherry trees a visit.

The beautiful Sakura trees were first donated to Toronto citizens by the Japanese ambassador to Canada, in appreciation of Toronto’s support for Japanese refugees after the Second World War. The most recent arrivals were trees donated in the early 2000s.

Whilst these cherry blossoms can be seen at other locations around Toronto, such as the University of Toronto or York University, High Park is by far the best known display.

The cherry blossom was very pretty, although our experience was somewhat tainted by the sheer number of people that were there at the same time. Obviously everyone else had heard the news that the peak blossom was on Wednesday!

It was also good to see High Park in different conditions to those in which we’d last seen it. Our previous visit had been in January, when we were able to walk on the frozen Grenadier Pond!

The cherry blossom lasts for around 4-10 days, depending on factors such as whether there has been any rainfall. So, it might not be too late to check out the blossom if you haven’t done so already (there are websites which that keep a ‘live track’ of the blossom, so take a look at these first).

The biggest concentration of cherry blossom is by Hillside Gardens, but they can also be seen close to the baseball pitches and by the Upper Duck Pond.

Stewart