East Gardens of the Imperial Palace (May 26 morning)

Thank you so much for joining TFWT for the morning tour on May 26th.

We welcomed 8 guests from USA and India. A family, a lady and a group of three men. We enjoyed walking under the beautiful weather in May.

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Now irises were blooming in Ninomaru garden. For another month will be the best time to come and enjoy the irises.

Hydrangeas are beginning to bloom in the Honmaru area. Even after the cherry blossoms, we can enjoy a lot of flowers in this Imperial palace garden. This is a place to enjoy fresh green in the middle of Tokyo.

It is said that foreigners who visited Japan are amazed that there are many flower beds in town, and these flowers are well groomed and beautifully bloom. A friend from overseas once told me that flowers blooming like this will be stolen amazingly quickly in his country. Of course there are few outrageous person also in Japan, but most flowers are loved in the form of nature. It is being well maintained not only in private gardens but also in the corner of the sidewalk of the street. This may be called a unique culture in Japan.

Japanese people gladly pay for looking beautiful flowers. The solid evidence is that there are a lot of large flower parks that opened recently, in Furano: lavenders, in Ashikaga: wisterias, in Hitachinaka: tulips and nemophilas, etc. And tens of thousands visitors gather per day during the best season. These are popular tourist spots also for foreigners.

In these parks, the flowers and the landscape are united, and reputed to be like a beautiful picture. I don’t think there are parks like these outside Japan, with hundreds of thousands of flowers are planted in a tremendously large hill.

Finally I’d like to introduce my favorite flowers in my own garden. This flower is named “Hot lips”. It is cherry sage. This flower is a kind of herb. This flowers keep bloom for a long time from April to September.

(Keiko)