Cherry Blossom Festival at Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

The annual Sakura Matsuri, or Cherry Blossom Festival, took place at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens recently and my friends and I went to enjoy the pink blossoms and picnic on the Cherry Esplanade! Also known as the 'Cherry Walk' we were sitting among hundreds of other park goers enjoying the musical entertainment up on stage and the very pricey bento boxes of sushi, vegetables and chicken teriyaki.

It was very crowded but it made for some interesting photos with all of the fluffy cherry blossoms and swarms of families and their kids.

The crowds at the Cherry Blossom Festival




Cherry Blossom and Japanese Hill and Pond




After leaving the Festival grounds, I went into Shakespeare's Garden where I saw some Bleeding Hearts!


And tulips!

Flowers at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

It's flower power season over at the Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn. Macro shots of these petals and stems are all over the internet (well, maybe just flickr) and they are impressive and intimidating to me because I can barely get a good shot with my little pink Sony camera! But also, they are inspiring. And they are the types of things that look so different when photographed than they do in real life.

More flowers here!





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Wildlife at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

I love the color Cherry Blossoms are famous in Japan), I know people who really like turtles, and someday I want a pet duck, so the wildlife on view at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens inside the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden are fun as can be for me!

orange Koi fish being koi

I couldn't keep up with this one!

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"Creeping Mint", "American Onion" and more!

I mentioned the many plant and flower species that are at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, and here are some of the entertaining and unique ones that I came across.

Which one is your favorite out of the bunch?

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Walk the "Cherry Walk"

Last year when I visited the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, it was a cold and windy May Day. This year, in late-April, it was as warm as can be. Rather than sweater and scarf weather, it was just plain sweat weather! It was so hot that I was even tempted to lay out and get a tan in the beautiful green fields among the famous Cherry Blossom trees.

It was great to revisit this plant-filled place because I got to see some familiar sights, discover some new spots, and gain a new experience in an old place.

The crowds came out to walk the Cherry Walk in its prime - the buds and petals were plentiful on these flowering Japanese trees. This is a wonderful place to visit with friends and family, from the hundreds of plant and flower species to the wildlife and of course, the cherry trees!

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Let's get nautical

One can only take so much green. Please.

So in my green escape I came across a beautiful pond called Japanese Hill and Pond Garden with a rockin Japanese torii (totally had to look up these titles!).

There was a wedding ceremony just finishing up as well.

Plans and Plants

On a cold May day - Sunday May 11th - I had plans to go to Brooklyn for the second time in my life. I hadn't been since September when it was labor day weekend and I had nothing to do in Manhattan, so I got on the usual Brooklyn-bound N train and was actually Brooklyn-bound for once.

I wore a thin wind breaker but still broke some serious wind. It was freezing at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. I went to do the Cherry Blossom walk, but the Cherry trees had already blossomed, so I had to keep walking, and look what I came across!