How a First Lady's Park Plan Brought Japan's Cherry Trees to Washington

The first shipment of Japanese cherry trees to Washington, D.C., arrived infested with insects, nematodes and disease, and every sapling had to be destroyed. The cherries that now draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Tidal Basin each spring exist because Japan and the United States quickly fixed that diplomatic embarrassment. This account follows a National Park Service article on First Lady Helen "Nellie" Herron Taft and what it calls her "landscape diplomacy."

Cherry blossoms frame the Washington Monument across the Tidal Basin (NPS photo).

A park modeled on Manila

In 1901, Nellie Taft went with her husband, William Howard Taft, then Governor General of the Philippines, to Manila. There she was introduced to the Luneta, a river park with a grand bandstand, gardens and tree-lined promenades where the city's elite strolled in the evening. In 1909, soon after her husband's inauguration as president, she saw the reclaimed tidal flats south of the Washington Monument as the site for a second one for the capital's citizens.

The Office of Public Buildings and Grounds had already built the basin, a motorway and a seawall. Taft added the vision: walkways lined with trees, small changes to the basin's shape, more formal plantings and a bandstand for twilight concerts. Potomac Park became a fashionable gathering place.

Helen Taft, about 1909 (Library of Congress).

Two gifts

During the improvements, Dr. David Fairchild, a plant explorer and U.S. Department of Agriculture official, and Eliza Scidmore, a Washington socialite, asked her to plant cherry trees. Fairchild wanted a grand avenue of cherries and Scidmore a cluster along the Potomac. On April 7, 1909, Taft answered with enthusiasm. She directed her superintendent to buy Japanese cherries for the road then called "The Speedway," today's Independence Avenue.

By chance, Jokichi Takamine, a celebrated Japanese chemist, was in the city the day after her plans became public, while Japanese officials were working to strengthen ties between the nations and a state dinner took place on April 4, 1909. Takamine alerted the Japanese consul in New York, who came to Washington with an offer: 2,000 cherry trees as a gesture of goodwill, of varieties representing different regions of the Japanese Empire. Taft accepted.

The gift reached Seattle in January 1910. USDA inspectors found the trees infested with insects, nematodes and diseases and had them destroyed at once, which created a tense diplomatic situation. The Secretary of State and the Japanese Ambassador stepped in, and their solution was a second gift from the citizens of Japan, grown in more controlled conditions.

Japanese cherry trees line the walkway at the edge of the Tidal Basin, 1919 (Detroit Publishing Co., Library of Congress).

The second shipment arrived in 1912 with a personal letter to Taft from the Mayoress of Tokyo, Yei Theodora Ozaki, who wrote that her husband, the Mayor of Tokyo, hoped the trees would form an avenue in Washington as a memorial of friendship between the two countries. On March 27, 1912, Taft and Viscountess Iwa Chinda, wife of the Japanese Ambassador, planted the first two trees on the northern edge of the Tidal Basin. The ceremony was simple but left a lasting impression.

A symbol that kept being renewed

First Lady Lady Bird Johnson planting a tree during the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, April 6, 1965 (White House Photo Office Collection, National Archives).

The article credits Taft with setting the precedent of a First Lady using landscape as a diplomatic tool, strengthening Japanese-American relations and creating a beloved Washington landmark.

Spring is a popular time to see the cherry blossoms and the monuments around the Tidal Basin (NPS photo).

Sources

• National Park Service, New Beginnings: Cherry Blossoms and Helen Taft's Landscape Diplomacy, National Mall and Memorial Parks; rewritten in hubnx's own words.