At 4 Seasons Tree Care we appreciate the beauty of all trees, so when we found out about the traditional Japanese Hanami Festival we thought we’d investigate further.

Hanami is the Japanese festival which welcomes spring and is also known as the “cherry blossom festival.” this annual celebration is about appreciating the temporal beauty of nature. People gather under blooming cherry blossoms for food, drink, songs, companionship and the beauty of sakura (cherry blossoms).

You wouldn’t really expect to find this kind of celebration in the middle of Kent, but the Brogdale Collection in Faversham has decided that England needs to take a leaf out of our Eastern cousin’s books. Bearing in mind, that they have the largest collection of fruit trees in the world, it is most definitely worth a visit.

There are 350 flowering cherry tree varieties alone at Brogdale, and that’s before you even think about the apple, pear, quince and plum trees. That’s a LOT of blossom.

Before we relaxed beneath the cherry trees with our picnics, we were given a tour of the orchard and learned some fascinating facts about fruit trees:

There are no original English apple trees. All apple varieties have been sourced from overseas.

Most apple and pear trees have undergone ‘grafting’ which is a technique that helps tree propagation. It isn’t possible to reproduce a plant which is identical to the original purely from a seed, so instead we have to graft two or three varieties together to get the desired outcome of fruit, tree height etc. Once a tree is grafted, its fruit is identical to the original tree. We can then use the branches of our newly grafted tree to graft even more trees.

Fruit is generally picked from standing height at all fruit tree nurseries. It is in fact a breach of the ‘Working at Height’ regulations to use ladders in commercial situations.

Golden delicious apples are only popular as they stay on the tree for much longer than other varieties.

Fruiting cherry trees have white blossom while ornamental cherry trees have pink blossom also.