National Chrysanthemum Exhibition, Tokyo, Japan
I recently returned from a vacation to Japan. We went many places but one of my favorites was definitely visiting the Chrysanthemum Exhibition in Tokyo. The exhibit is held in Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden which is right in the middle of Tokyo (think kinda’ like Central Park in NYC). The day we visited was a national holiday (Culture Day in Japan) so the park was packed with tons of picnic visitors. I really loved the fact that so many people choose to spend their day off in a garden!
Early November is Chrysanthemum season in Japan (and here in the Upstate). We actually didn’t grow them on my farm this year and this trip was a big part of the reason why- so if I couldn’t cut my own- Why not go see them in Japan??
The exhibit was set up throughout the garden in shelters so you walked a trail from shelter to shelter to see the different varieties.
It’s hard to capture the scale of the flowers in pictures but many of them were disbudded to be very large- 10-12” in diameter. In the gallery below, I’ve included the description cards that were featured with each exhibit before the flower pictures from that exhibit. It was very impressive to see the precision with which they are grown.
*If you click on a picture, it will pop it up into a light box so you can see it larger.
