‘The Loveliest Of Trees, The Cherry Now...'

Robert Vernon (snr) of The Bluebell Arboretum and Nursery at Smisby writes about the Prunus x ‘Kanzan’ flourishing in Smisby churchyard and, no doubt, in many other sites around Derbyshire

It’s all too easy to take for granted Japanese flowering cherries which, whatever the weather, reliably fill many

English gardens with beautiful blooms each spring. However, cast your mind back 150 years or so when the first of hundreds of cherry cultivars started to arrive from Japan, which hitherto had been virtually closed to the west.

The best that British gardeners could then have looked forwards to were the cool white flowers of blackthorn in April, occasional wild cherry trees with their single flowers or our familiar May blossom.

Try to imagine the first time people were lucky enough to see one of the first flowering Japanese cherries, perhaps planted locally in Derby Arboretum, the first public arboretum in England, opened in 1840.