Feature: Vancouver festivals welcome colorful cherry blossom season

By: EVAN DUGGAN

VANCOUVER, April 8 (Xinhua) -- Eunice Mak poses, holding a small, pink flower in her hand beneath a blooming cherry tree as her friend Rebecca Choi steadies her phone to snap a photo.

They're standing under a canopy of bright pink cherry blossoms at Garry Point Park in Richmond for the Vancouver-area city's second annual Cherry Blossom Festival.

"Pink is my favorite colour," Mak tells Xinhua in between photo takes. "The trees are really pretty compared to other trees because other trees don't really have flowers blooming on them."

It was important to come down today to the see the blooms because they only last for a little while in Vancouver's damp springtime, she adds.

Choi says her friend brought her down to take photos as a favor, but she's glad she came.

"I'm glad it worked out with the good timing of the trees blooming," Choi says.

"It's raining a little bit, but I'm really glad that I came out to capture the blossoms. The blossoms are beautiful and they're still pretty intact on the trees," Choi says. "You don't find a lot wilting and on the ground."

The park here in Richmond boasts the largest single cluster of cherry blossom trees in the Metro Vancouver region, says Jim Tanaka, who is part of the organization that launched the event last year.

He says since the year 2000, 255 blooming akebono cherry trees have been planted in this park, which sits in Richmond's historic Steveston neighborhood, which clings to the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Fraser River.

Tanaka says he and his fellow organizers launched the festival last year to mark Canada's 150th birthday, but now they want to convert it into an annual event.

"This year, we lucked out," he says. "It's in full bloom."

At this time each year, tens of thousands of cherry trees bloom on streets and in parks throughout Metro Vancouver cities.

The City of Vancouver has more than 40,000 cherry trees, including 54 different varieties, and has its own version of a cherry blossom festival happening this week.

The trees bloom at various times between mid-March and mid-May.

Most of the trees were planted in the region in the 1930s after arriving here as a gift from Yokohama - Vancouver's sister city in Japan.

Volunteers continue to plant more trees each year.

"Cherry blossoms in Japan are to welcome the beginning of the spring and also to enjoy the (seasonal) beauty," Tanaka says.

He says he hopes the Richmond Cherry Blossom Festival blooms into the city's largest annual civic event.

"We want it to bring Richmond's diverse and vibrant community together to reconnect and make new friends, and above all, rekindle the sense of community, which is lacking, in my opinion, today," he says.

"You can't deny it," he adds. "It's gorgeous out there." Enditem